Starborn Odyssey (The Starborn Odyssey Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Nettie and I were the first to the airlock, though six more made it in for the first exodus. The outside temperature registered 71 degrees and the atmospheric pressure was 15.3 PSI, so we knew we wouldn’t freeze or blow up like a balloon on this world.

  Bright sunlight greeted us as we stepped off the ramp from the ship. We were in the middle of a field of genuine green grass surrounded by a forest of real trees, just like the ones in our Hydrop. It was silent except for the sigh of a light breeze. The aroma of the wide variety of plants was pleasing to my senses, and the ground itself had a mild musty smell; not at all unpleasant.

  “It makes you want to run about and kick up your heels, doesn’t it?” Asked Josh. “I once saw a vid where the people laid on the ground and just watched the clouds,” he added.

  “It’s like a wide open version of the Hydrop,” said Nettie. “I think this is the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “I wonder what kinds of things are watching us, right now?” I queried, causing the others to look around with sudden apprehension. I turned to look over the ship and as far as I could tell, other than a dented nose from where it hit a large boulder, it didn’t look too bad. All things considered, we were very lucky; thanks to some brilliant flying by Brad, and the new alloy the ship was made out of.

  Doc Hebron was outside with us to look around. “There aren’t any bugs or anything flying around like there were on Sne-az.” She stated. “I mean, how do things pollinate without them?”

  “I don’t see any flowers,” observed Nettie. “Maybe they didn’t evolve the same way here.”

  “Or perhaps this planet—or moon as it were—was being terraformed by one of our colony ships or even some other race from elsewhere.” I conjectured.

  Much to my surprise Doc Hebron tended to agree with my theory. “It’s as logical as anything I can come up with; still, we’ve got to explore a little to see what is here,” she emphasized.

  “Lee,” called Olga; and Doc turned in response. Olga was listening to her comm, then reported: “Mike’s conscious; I think you might need to give him something for pain.”

  “OK Lieutenant,” answered Lee as she turned back toward the ship. “Oh, get me soil samples and water from somewhere. We need to find out what’s here, to see if we can live here, and what bacteria are here as well.”

  I volunteered to go in search of water, to get the required samples, while Josh and Ira were digging up soil samples. Nettie joined me; said she was sure there was a stream and pond dead ahead from our crash landing spot; she’d been afraid we would hit it when we were coming down. So off we went.

  Olga came on the headset warning us to keep our comm. on and not to go too far. “We don’t have a clue what’s here.” Her voice was serious; she meant it. “I want to know exactly where everybody is at all times until we figure out what we’re going to be able to do.” It was the only sensible approach.

  We had only gone a half mile or so when we saw the line of trees from the top of the knoll; the trees bordered the stream she’d seen during the approach and the small lake into which it flowed. It wasn’t much more than another half mile to the stream and the pond half a mile beyond that.

  “We should probably get our samples from the stream first, and take them back to the ship, so Doc has something to test as soon as possible.” Suggested Nettie, as we cautiously approached the stream. “Captain Pierce said we’re going to be in the history books as the first explorers of our new worlds; isn’t that sort of weird to think of?” She said off-handedly.

  “I suppose none of the explorers in history really saw themselves as historic figures.” I responded. “But I guess you’re pretty much right; it does seem strange when you think about it.”

  As we approached the stream we noticed a wide variety of trees, from oaks to willows, and even some sort of evergreens. “It seems strange for things to have developed this far without critters of some kind. I agree with Lee; this doesn’t obey the rules of natural evolution. Trees, bushes, grass; all are usually food or home to some kinds of animal life.” I pondered aloud, trying to make sense out of what I was seeing.

  “Doc thinks it was terraformed by someone; do you really think one of the other expeditions has been here; and if so, why is there no evidence of them now?” Puzzled Nettie as we arrived at the stream.

  We proceeded to collect water samples, and there were definitely living organisms in it, though nothing bigger than the nail on your little finger.

  “Let’s get these specimens back to the ship,” I said. “I want to see what Doc thinks after she checks them out.” With that we hustled back, still not seeing or hearing any signs of larger life forms.

  As we entered the ship we could hear a debate going on between Doc and Mike Dermot. “I’m fine!” He was saying. “Just let me look at the gyros to see what went wrong. If I don’t, we could be here a long time, and the Captain wants us back with proof of a better option for our new home, now!” He emphasized.

  Reluctantly the good doctor gave in. “Ok, but if you collapse, it’s not going to be my fault. You’ve had a severe blow to your head, and trauma like that is hard to predict even under less stressful conditions; you’re on your own,” she said with insincere finality.

  Nettie and I immediately distracted her with the water samples, and Mike was able to get to work, Brad close behind, being the only other qualified tech on board. The two of them were our only hope of lifting off this little world anytime soon.

  Doc Hebron set to work on the water by pouring some into the analyzer and checking the readouts.

  “Just as I expected,” She said as the readings were flashing across the screen. “It’s the same as the soil was; oh, you weren’t here when I ran my preliminary tests on that, but it’s the same type of results. The soil contained some micro organisms and a very small variety of earth worm. Nothing more advanced than that; the water is the same way, though all of our samples come from a very small area I’m willing to bet it’s the same over the whole planet. It’s like the planet was seeded with some of the life but, never got the rest; there are no signs of evolution at all; as if it just came into existence all at once. I really think you called it right from the start, Eric, though I don’t know if any of the larger life forms exist elsewhere on the planet—or, is there some terrible thing that has destroyed the higher life forms, and if there is, there should be some evidence that the creatures were here at some earlier time.” She seemed to realize that she was rambling; more or less thinking out loud. “Well, either way, we need to scavenge around a bit more, looking for clues to something we may have missed, if it exists.”

  “So, what you’re saying,” I began, “is that somehow things got here without having to go through normal evolution? Everything just popped up like it was planted.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” she said. “I’d like to know whose done the terraforming here, because the very idea suggests that someday, someone may come back to claim their rights to this place. It’s still, I’d even say most likely to have been an earlier expedition; I can’t imagine some alien race having brought Earth-type trees, like oak and maple and even spruce, from another world. It’s just way too unlikely that things could have evolved so exactly the same.”

  At that moment, Brad and Mike came out of the service access. “Well, we found the problem with the gyro, and I think we can get it back on line in a day, if we have enough copper wire in our parts storage bin. If so, we can take off tomorrow,” said Brad exultantly. “While I check for the wire, I would appreciate you giving Mike another shot to keep him going,” he directed at Lee with a grin.

  “Only if he can rest for an hour or two before he crawls back in there; if he passes out in there it’ll be hell trying to get him out where I can treat him again.”

  “Agreed,” said Brad. “Eric; get a call through to the Captain and give him the latest on our condition if you will. That OK with you, Olga?”

  “Yeah, we’d better; besides, I thin
k Lee needs to talk with him about the conditions here. We surely won’t be back in time for the vote, but with the news and video feeds from here, we should have no excuse to interfere with the Fenninz; and that’s what we came to find out about. We’ll worry about other problems as they come.” Which, of course, they did.

  Trouble

  It was more than an hour before I succeeded in contacting the Astro II, and a little longer yet to reach Captain Pierce. I gave him a quick rundown on events so far on the little moon, but left the conclusions to Doc Hebron. She tried to explain her theories about this little planetoid.

  “We can live here comfortably and we can breed our livestock here and perhaps transplant some of the wildlife from Sne-az to fill in the gaps.” Doc told him.

  “Well at least I got some good news for the rest of the colony,” Capt. Pierce said, sounding weary. “Now; the bad news is that yesterday about fifty colonists stole two of the shuttles and took off to Sne-az after overpowering the guards; nobody was killed, but four were seriously injured. For now I think the theories about terraforming etcetera, should be kept out of the reports until after the vote. I don’t want to give these malcontents anything to work with if I can help it. Now, can we get your little ship running safely, or should I send a shuttle for you? I don’t want to risk an accident if you aren’t a hundred percent certain about the repairs.”

  “Mike and I have all we need to do the repair, and we can test it hovering just above the ground to know that it’s right, without risk to anybody. If it works two feet up, it’ll work fifty miles up, so we can make that decision later if things don’t test well,” assured Brad confidently.

  “Call in before you attempt takeoff; one of the older shuttles could be there within five days, so NO UNECCESSRY RISKS!” Emphasized the Captain before signing off.

  “Guess he wants us to make it back,” said Brad with a chuckle.

  “Meanwhile, I think we need to wander around some and try to gather as much info and as many samples of plants and fauna, if any, as we can find,” suggested Olga. “And don’t get careless just because we haven’t found anything threatening so far. We’ve had amazing luck and I’ve no desire to change that. Oh; and make sure you don’t wander off alone; pair up for all excursions.” This said with an emphasis on the “all.”

  For the next twenty hours we roamed free and slept when we were tired, ate when we were hungry and gathered a wealth of information. Not one critter or bird showed up but a number of snakes and lizards were found to exist there. Oddly, one kind of lizard turned out to have teeth, learned the hard way by Josh. Fortunately it was not venomous. He did however get an antibiotic and antitoxin shot just to be safe; oh, and two stitches! On the more serious side Hester got bitten by a snake that did turn out to be poisonous, and required several doses of anti toxins, one of which, fortunately, was effective. The effective dose was the one we had for neurotoxins. There were some shaky moments waiting to see if she was going to survive. That’s as close to a real disaster as any of us ever wanted to get, and it would be days before Hester felt completely well; but she was really lucky that Lee knew what she was doing, or she’d have purchased the farm, as they use to say.

  One of the most puzzling things about the snakes and lizards was the question of what they ate, especially the snakes, the largest of which was about three feet long, whose normal diet would have been rodents. “I just can’t see where they get enough volume or balance with only slugs and lizards as their main diet. I’ve dissected one and the only thing in its digestive system was unidentifiable, but it was neither lizard nor slug. We’re still missing something,” said Lee.

  At last Mike and Brad came out of their crawl space to tell us, “It’s time to test our wings.”

  Brad insisted that we all get out and move at least fifty feet away from the ship. “No sense in risking any more lives than absolutely necessary.” He insisted.

  Mike, however, insisted on staying on board. “I need to monitor visually, the gyros in operation, so I can tell you to shut it down, before it fries completely. That’s the only safe way to do this test.”

  I think we all knew that to be pure bull crap, but we were willing to let him have his way; none of us willing to let Brad take all of the risk completely by himself. Besides, we’d have had to tie Mike up to stop him. There was a great deal of loyalty on our crew, having been through a lot together already.

  We all got off and did some serious praying! None of us wanted to need rescuing from this world, and that was that!

  With a whining sound, the vertical lift engines fired up and the craft rose slowly off the ground and hovered there, and after about thirty seconds it set back down; the test was over. The hatch opened, and Mike announced the successful repair; we could leave any time.

  I called in to the ship to inform the Captain that we were on the way, and he gave Brad the new coordinates for our rendezvous with the ship, only about thirty hours away. I have to admit, it was a relief to lift off and be headed home at last; and then I had a moment of confusion about what was now really going to be home. Were we really going to live on that little world? I suddenly felt very unsettled about leaving the only world I’ve ever known, for good! I know I should be excited beyond containment but, as I contemplated the changes to come—for example, establishing an economic system, and housing, and even a power grid—these were almost overwhelming considerations. Living on the ship guaranteed a certain amount of security, since there was no way to be left out of the equation. It was by nature, a democratic form of socialism because it had to be. True democracy and capitalism simply couldn’t work on a voyage of this nature. Now, things were going to change drastically and we were going to have to learn new ways of thinking; very scary! I kept these thoughts to myself for the moment, but I suspected I was not the only one thinking about it, by the almost somber mood of our little group during the return trip.

  Our ship was of a new type, as previously mentioned, and not only had the drive been improved, but the comfort facilities as well. It was intended to carry up to fifty people where the older models were made for half that number. It still had the standard pulse gravity system that had replaced centrifugal systems used in the early days of space travel, which was no good for extended voyages, because it interfered with your body’s fluids; hence your inner ear, causing balance problems when you returned to normal gravity. Although I can’t really explain exactly how it works—I leave that to the physicists and physicians—I can replace parts, and I don’t need to know more. It’s still a lot more spacious and it has descent privy facilities and even a small room for changing, laundering and storing clothes.

  I was in the observation port in the top of the ship, thinking about the upcoming changes, when Nettie entered and looked me in the eye. “What’s troubling you?” She asked with a concerned expression on her face. “You’ve been so quiet since we took off this morning and just now you looked like you’d lost your best friend.”

  I had been staring out at nothing and as I looked at her I realized how spaced I’d been. “Have you thought about the immediate future; I mean, now that we have a home world to go to?” I asked.

  I could see that my question had already been on her mind, too. She gazed out of the port at the void for a minute before answering. “I thought that might be it.” She finally said softly. I could hear the emotion in her voice. “This is what it’s always been about; finding a new home. Up till now, there’s been only that, but suddenly, it’s about a whole lot more.” She sounded the way I was feeling. “I think I can handle it if we do this, together.” She finally said, looking back into my eyes searchingly.

  “You know,” I said hesitantly. “I was just arriving at the same conclusion. It’s just all so big, it’s a bit scary; even overwhelming.” I finished.

  “I’m with you all the way, Eric.” She whispered putting her hand on mine.

  “Same,” I said, and meant it. “I guess it’s just the change in modes that’s so distur
bing. I think there’s a letdown; our first and main goal has been met. I guess I’d never felt like we’d get this far; I mean, it means the future is now.”

  “So, we make a world together now.” She smiled.

  “Yeah,” I said, suddenly feeling a whole lot better about everything. “I’m glad you’re going to share it with me.” I kissed her, and we snuggled together for a long while; as a matter of fact, until joined by Olga and Brad who came in looking for a getaway themselves. It was the last peace and quiet we would see for a long time to come.

  As we approached the Astro II the comm. sprang to life demanding that we identify ourselves. I responded with the proper response and we were given clearance to land. After landing we were escorted straight to the Captain’s office to report. It seemed so formal, we didn’t know quite what to think; then we saw Captain Pierce. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week!

  “I’m very glad to have you back; things have been a little strained here, as you can probably see. If it hadn’t been for the news you sent back, we would have lost the vote. The big problem now is to try and retrieve the group back from Sne-az. We’ve communicated with them but they say they’ve chosen to stay and make their home there,” he said as he ran his fingers though his thinning hair; he really looked haggard. “Here’s the long and short of it,” he began. “I need volunteers to join the mission I’ve been assembling to go and try to convince Turley and his group to come to the new colony with us; though the stars know I’d just as soon be rid of them. Nevertheless, I fear his plans for the Fenninz, from what I’ve gathered from those who changed their minds about going; he was talking about how they could set themselves up with that kind of cheap labor; that’s not something we can ignore.”

  I was stunned to think that anyone would think of using any sentient being in that fashion. Surely we didn’t come to the stars to start slavery over again. Even Turley with his arrogance couldn’t possibly be planning to commit that kind of atrocity.