Frank M. Robinson by The Dark Beyond the Stars

Author:The Dark Beyond the Stars
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

N one of us slept the last two time periods before our first landing on Aquinas II. We were ten thousand kilometers out and the planet was a swollen yellow-brown globe. To the eye, it was featureless except for an occasional streak of dirty yellow or black in the smog that hid its surface. But our instruments had penetrated the veil; we knew that there were mountains of rock and water ice, as well as oceans of methane, and that methane snow fell on methane ice caps.

On the one hand, the chances of life seemed promising but on the other, the intense cold ruled against it. Gravity was a little more than Earth normal, the terrain was rough, the atmosphere heavy and thick. Judging by the turbulent cloud cover, there were strong surface winds. Visibility would be limited and working in the high winds dangerous.

Despite the cold and the too-recent memory of the cautionary projections, the primordial soup presented possibilities. It was remarkable how we concentrated on them and ignored the dangers. Once we had landed, who would be the first to find life? Even the would-be mutineers were caught up in the lottery.

During the sleep period before the landing, we clustered in the various working spaces or in the compartments of friends. Close to a hundred crew members would be going down. My team included Hawk, Eagle, Crow, and Snipe. Ophelia and Portia were the Seniors in command. Loon, Thrush, and Heron had been assigned to the team commanded by Tybalt and Quince.

I was grateful for the separation.

The team leaders and other Seniors kept to themselves but none of the younger would-be explorers like myself could sleep. My teammates and I found refuge among the cannibalized Rovers in Exploration, where we passed around some smoke and speculated about what we would find on Aquinas II. Snipe managed to get hold of a crude relief map of the landing area and we crowded around while Crow focused the rays of a portable glow lamp on it. Snipe and Crow were mutineers, but this was their first planet and they were as enthusiastic as the rest.

“Base camp should be here, to the north of this small mountain called Trefil. It’s relatively flat but it won’t take long to travel by Rover to the scarps and the highlands.”

“It looks flat,” Snipe said thoughtfully, “but it wouldn’t have to be very rough to make travel difficult.”

Hawk nudged me in the ribs. “What do you think our chances are of finding life, Sparrow?”

He and the others waited anxiously for my opinion, forgetting for a moment that I was only Sparrow. For all practical purposes planetary exploration was as new to me as it was to them, regardless of how many planets Aaron, Hamlet, and my previous incarnations had investigated.

The only planet I had memories of didn’t exist.

I shrugged. “It’s cold, probably too cold for life.”

“Life as we know it,” Eagle said, disappointed at my response.

“It doesn’t mean it was always too cold,” Hawk added.

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