Darkover: First Contact Read online

  He supposed it was only fair to give everyone a chance at the mountains, and certainly the slidewalks and lifts installed to the top of Mount Rainier and Everest and Mount Whitney had made it easier for old women and children to get up there and have a chance to see the scenery. But still, MacAran thought longingly, to climb an actual wild mountain—one with no slidewalks and not even a single chairlift! He’d climbed on Earth, but you felt silly struggling up a rock cliff when teenagers were soaring past you in chairlifts on their effortless way to the top and giggling at the anachronist who wanted to do it the hard way!

  Some of the nearer slopes were blackened with the scars of old forest fires, and he estimated that the clearing where the ship lay was second-growth from some such fire a few years before. Lucky the ship’s fire-prevention systems had prevented any fire on impact—otherwise if anyone had escaped alive, it might have been quite literally from a frying pan into a raging forest fire. They’d have to be careful in the woods. Earth people had lost their old woodcraft habits and might not be aware anymore of what forest fires could do. He made a mental note of it for his report.

  As he re-entered the area of the crash, his brief euphoria vanished. Inside the field hospital, through the semi-transparent plastic of the shelter material, he could see rows and rows of unconscious or semiconscious bodies. A group of men were trimming branches from tree trunks and another small group was raising a dymaxion dome—the kind, based on triangular bracings, which could be built in half a day. He began to wonder what the report of the Engineering crew had been. He could see a crew of machinists crawling around on the crumpled bracings of the starship, but it didn’t look as if much had been accomplished. In fact, it didn’t look hopeful for getting away very soon.

  As he passed the hospital, a young man in a stained and crumpled Medic uniform came out and called.

  “Rafe! The Mate said report to the First Dome as soon as you get back—there’s a meeting there and they want you. I’m going over there myself for a Medic report—I’m the most senior man they can spare.” He moved slowly beside MacAran. He was slight and small, with light-brown hair and a small curly brown beard, and he looked weary, as if he had had no sleep. MacAran asked hesitatingly, “How are things going in the hospital?”

  “Well, no more deaths since midnight, and we’ve taken four more people off critical. There evidently wasn’t a leak in the atomics after all—that girl from Comm checked out with no radiation burns; the vomiting was evidently just a bad blow in the solar plexus. Thank God for small favors—if the atomics had sprung a leak, we’d probably all be dead, and another planet contaminated.”

  “Yeah, the M-AM drives have saved a lot of lives,” MacAran said. “You look awfully tired, Ewen—have you had any sleep at all?”

  Ewen Ross shook his head. “No, but the Old Man’s been generous with wakers, and I’m still racing my motors. About midafternoon I’m probably going to crash and I won’t wake up for three days, but until then I’m holding on.” He hesitated, looked shyly at his friend and said, “I heard about Jenny, Rafe. Tough luck. So many of the girls back in that area made it out, I was sure she was okay.”

  “So was I.” MacAran drew a deep breath and felt the clean air like a great weight on his chest. “I haven’t seen Heather—is she—”

  “Heather’s okay; they drafted her for nursing duty. Not a scratch on her. I understand after this meeting they’re going to post completed lists of the dead, the wounded and the survivors. What were you doing, anyway? Del Rey told me you’d been sent out, but I didn’t know what for.”

  “Preliminary surveying,” MacAran said. “We have no idea of our latitude, no idea of the planet’s size or mass, no idea about climate or seasons or what have you. But I’ve established that we can’t be too far off the equator, and—well, I’ll be making the report inside. Do we go right in?”

  “Yeah, in the First Dome.” Half unconsciously, Ewen had spoken the words with capital letters, and MacAran thought how human a trait it was to establish location and orientation at once. Three days they had been here and already this first shelter was the First Dome, and the field shelter for the wounded was the Hospital.

  There were no seats inside the plastic dome, but some canvas groundsheets and empty supply boxes had been set around and someone had brought a folding chair down for Captain Leicester. Next to him, Camilla Del Rey sat on a box with a lapboard and notebook on her knees; a tall, slender, dark-haired girl with a long, jagged cut across her cheek, mended with plastic clips. She was wrapped in the warm fatigue uniform of a crewmember, but she had shucked the heavy parka-like top and wore only a thin, clinging cotton shirt beneath it. MacAran shifted his eyes from her, quickly—damn it, what was she up to, sitting around in what amounted to her underwear in front of half the crew! At a time like this it wasn’t decent . . . then, looking at the girl’s drawn and wounded face, he absolved her. She was hot—it was hot in here now—and she was, after all, on duty, and had a right to be comfortable.

  If anyone’s out of line it’s me, eyeing a girl like this at a time like this. . . .

  Stress. That’s all it is. There are too damn many things it’s not safe to remember or think about. . . .

  Captain Leicester raised his grey head. He looks like death, MacAran thought, probably he hasn’t slept since the crash either. He asked the Del Ray girl, “Is that everyone?”

  “I think so.”

  The Captain said, “Ladies, gentlemen. We won’t waste time on formalities, and for the duration of this emergency the protocols of etiquette are suspended. Since my recording officer is in the hospital, Officer Del Rey has kindly agreed to act as communications recorder for this meeting. First of all; I have called you together, a representative from every group, so that each of you can speak to your crews with authority about what is happening and we can minimize the growth of rumors and uninformed gossip about our position. And anywhere that more than twenty-five people are gathered, as I remember from my Pensacola days, rumors and gossip start up. So let’s get your information here, and not rely on what somebody told someone else’s best friend a few hours ago and what somebody else heard in the mess room—all right? Engineering: let’s begin with you. What’s the situation with the drives?”

  The Chief Engineer—his name was Patrick, but MacAran didn’t know him personally—stood up. He was a lanky gaunt man who resembled the folk hero Lincoln. “Bad,” he said laconically. “I’m not saying they can’t be fixed, but the whole drive room is a shambles. Give us a week to sort it out, and we can estimate how long it will take to fix the drives. Once the mess is cleared away, I’d say—three weeks to a month. But I’d hate to have my year’s salary depend on how close I came inside that estimate.”

  Leicester said, “But it can be fixed? It’s not hopelessly wrecked?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Patrick said. “Hell, it better not be! We may need to prospect for fuels, but with the big converter that’s no problem, any kind of hydrocarbon will do—even cellulose. That’s for energy-conversion in the life-support system, of course; the drive itself works on anti-matter implosions.” He became more technical, but before MacAran got too hopelessly lost, Leicester stopped him.

  “Save it, Chief. The important thing is, you’re saying it can be fixed, preliminary estimated time three to six weeks. Officer Del Rey, what’s the status on the bridge?”

  “Mechanics are in there now, Captain, they’re using cutting torches to get out the crumpled metal. The computer console is a mess, but the main banks are all right, and so is the library system.”

  “What’s the worst damage there?”

  “We’ll need new seats and straps all through the bridge cabin—the mechanics can handle that. And of course we’ll have to re-program our destination from the new location, but once we find out exactly where we are, that should be simple enough from the Navigation systems.”

  “Then there’s nothing hopeless there either?”

  “It’s honestly too ear
ly to say, Captain, but I shouldn’t think so. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I haven’t given up yet.”

  Captain Leicester said, “Well, just now things look about as bad as they can; I suspect we’re all tending to look on the grim side. Maybe that’s good; anything better than the worst will be a pleasant surprise. Where’s Dr. Di Asturien? Medic?”

  Ewen Ross stood up. “The Chief didn’t feel he could leave, sir; he’s got a crew working to salvage all remaining medical supplies. He sent me. There have been no more deaths and all the dead are buried. So far there is no sign of any unusual illness of unknown origin, but we are still checking air and soil samples, and will continue to do so, for the purpose of classifying known and unknown bacteria. Also—”

  “Go on.”

  “The Chief wants orders issued about using only the assigned latrine areas, Captain. He pointed out that we’re carrying all sorts of bacteria in our own bodies which might damage the local flora and fauna, and we can manage to disinfect the latrine areas fairly thoroughly—but we should take precautions against infecting outside areas.”

  “A good point,” Leicester said. “Ask someone to have the orders posted, Del Rey. And put a security man to make sure everybody knows where the latrines are, and uses them. No taking a leak in the woods just because you’re there and there aren’t any anti-littering laws.”

  Camilla Del Rey said, “Suggestion, Captain. Ask the cooks to do the same with the garbage, for a while, anyhow.”

  “Disinfect it? Good point. Lovat, what’s the status on the food synthesizer?”

  “Accessible and working, sir, at least temporarily. It might not be a bad idea, though, to check indigenous food supplies and make sure we can eat the local fruits and roots if we have to. If it goes on the blink—and it was never intended to run for long periods in planetary gravities—it will be too late to start testing the local vegetation then.” Judith Lovat, a small, sturdily built woman in her late thirties with the green emblem of Life-support systems on her smock, glanced toward the door of the dome. “The planet seems to be widely forested; there should be something we can eat, with the oxygen-nitrogen system of this air. Chlorophyll and photosynthesis seem to be pretty much the same on all M-type planets and the end product is usually some form of carbohydrate with amino acids.”

  “I’m going to put a botanist right on it,” Captain Leicester said, “which brings me to you, MacAran. Did you get any useful information from the hilltop?”

  MacAran stood up. He said, “I would have gotten more if we’d landed in the plains—assuming there are any on this planet—but I did get a few things. First, we’re about a thousand feet above sea level here, and definitely in the Northern hemisphere, but not too many degrees of latitude off the equator, considering that the Sun runs high in the sky. We seem to be in the foothills of an enormous mountain range, and the mountains are old enough to be forested—that is, no active apparent volcanoes in sight, and no mountains which look like the result of volcanic activity within the last few millennia. It’s not a young planet.”

  “Signs of life?” Leicester asked.

  “Birds in plenty. Small animals, perhaps mammals but I’m not sure. More kinds of trees than I knew how to identify. A good many of them were a kind of conifer, but there seemed to be hardwoods too, of a kind, and some bushes with various seeds and things. A botanist could tell you a lot more. No signs of any kind of artifact, however, no signs that anything has ever been cultivated or touched. As far as I can tell, the planet’s untouched by human—or any other—hands. But of course we may be in the middle of the equivalent of the Siberian steppes or the Gobi desert—way, way off the beaten track.”

  He paused, then said, “About twenty miles due east of here, there’s a prominent mountain peak—you can’t miss it—from which we could take sightings, and get some rough estimate of the planet’s mass, even without elaborate instruments. We might also sight for rivers, plains, water supply, or any signs of civilization.”

  Camilla Del Roy said, “From space there was no sign of life.”

  Moray, the heavy swarthy man who was the official representative of Earth Expeditionary, and in charge of the Colonists, said quietly, “Don’t you mean no signs of a technological civilization, Officer? Remember, until a scant four centuries ago, a starship approaching Earth could not have seen any signs of intelligent life there, either?”

  Captain Leicester said curtly, “Even if there is some form of pre-technological civilization, that is equivalent to no civilization at all, and whatever form of life there may be here, sapient or not, is not of any consequences to our purpose. They could give us no help in repairing our ship, and provided we are careful not to contaminate their ecosystems, there is no reason to approach them and create culture shock.”

  “I agree with your last statement,” Moray said slowly, “but I would like to raise one question you have not yet mentioned, Captain. Permission?”

  Leicester grunted, “First thing I said was that we’re suspending protocol for the duration—go ahead.”

  “What’s being done to check this planet out for habitability, in the event the drives can’t be repaired, and we’re stuck here?”

  MacAran felt a moment of shock which stopped him cold, then a small surge of relief. Someone had said it. Someone else was thinking about it. He hadn’t had to be the one to bring it up.

  But on Captain Leicester’s face the shock had not gone away; it had frozen into a stiff cold anger. “There’s very little chance of that.”

  Moray got heavily to his feet. “Yes. I heard what your crew was saying, but I’m not entirely convinced. I think that we should start, at once, to take inventory of what we have, and what is here, in the event that we are marooned here permanently.”

  “Impossible,” Captain Leicester said harshly. “Are you trying to say you know more than my crew about the condition of our ship, Mr. Moray?”

  “No. I don’t know a damn thing about starships, don’t know as I particularly want to. But I know wreckage when I see it. I know a good third of your crew is dead, including some important technicians. I heard officer Del Rey say that she thought—she only thought—that the navigational computer could be fixed, and I do know that nobody can navigate a M-AM drive in interstellar space without a computer. We’ve got to take it into account that this ship may not be going anywhere . And in that case, we won’t be going anywhere either. Unless we’ve got some boy genius who can build an interstellar communications satellite in the next five years with the local raw materials and the handful of people we have here, and send a message back to Earth, or to the Alpha Centauri or Coronis colonies to come and fetch their little lost sheep.”

  Camilla Del Rey said in a low voice, “Just what are you trying to do, Mr. Moray? Demoralize us further? Frighten us?”

  “No. I’m trying to be realistic.”

  Leicester said, making a noble effort to control the fury that congested his face, “I think you’re out of order, Mr. Moray. Our first order of business is to repair the ship, and for that purpose it may be necessary to draft every man, including the passengers from your Colonists group. We cannot spare large groups of men for remote contingencies,” he added emphatically, “so if that was a request, consider it denied. Is there any other business?”

  Moray did not sit down. “What happens then if six weeks from now we discover that you can’t fix your ship? Or six months?”

  Leicester drew a deep breath. MacAran could see the desperate weariness in his face and his effort not to betray it. “I suggest we cross that bridge if, and when, we see it in the distance, Mr. Moray. There is a very old proverb that says, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I don’t believe that a delay of six weeks will make all that difference in resigning ourselves to hopelessness and death. As for me, I intend to live, and to take this ship home again, and anyone who starts defeatist talk will have to reckon with me. Do I make myself clear?”

  Moray was evidently not satisfied; but so
mething, perhaps only the Captain’s will, kept him quiet. He lowered himself into his seat, still scowling.

  Leicester pulled Camilla’s lapboard toward him. “Is there anything else? Very well. I believe that will be all, ladies and gentlemen. Lists of survivors and wounded, and their condition, will be posted tonight. Yes, Father Valentine?”

  “Sir, I have been requested to say a Requiem Mass for the dead, at the site of the mass graves. Since the Protestant chaplain was killed in the crash, I would like to offer my services to anyone, of any faith, who can use them for anything whatsoever.”

  Captain Leicester’s face softened as he looked at the young priest, his arm in a sling and one side of his face heavily bandaged. He said, “Hold your service by all means, Father. I suggest dawn tomorrow. Find someone who can work on erecting a suitable memorial here; some day, maybe a few hundred years from now, this planet may be colonized, and they should know. We’ll have time for that, I imagine.”

  “Thank you, Captain. Will you excuse me? I must go back to the hospital.”

  “Yes, Father, go ahead. Anyone who wants to get back now is excused—unless there are any questions? Very well.” Leicester leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes briefly. “MacAran and Dr. Lovat, will you stay a minute, please?”

  MacAran came forward slowly, surprised beyond words; he had never spoken to the Captain before, and had not realized that Leicester knew him even by sight. What could he want? The others were leaving the dome, one by one; Ewen touched his shoulder briefly and whispered, “Heather and I will be at the Requiem Mass, Rafe. I’ve got to go. Come around to the hospital and let me check that concussion. Peace, Rafe; see you later,” before he slipped away.