Tau Ceti Read online

  Syrdian collapsed to the ground as Qes flew away. Dropping the meat hie’d cut free from the talor, Dex flew back to Syrdian with a few powerful strokes, dropping to Syrdian’s side. Hie looked in horror at Syrdian’s wing where a few of Dex’s fiberlin sutures had been cut. They had pulled out, allowing the largest rip to pull open about a third of its length. Evidently traumatized by the realization that hies wing truly was ripped, Syrdian had fainted again. With a sigh and a shrug of hies wings Dex crouched, pulling out hies roll of fine fiberlin.

  Dex was tying the last knot in hies re-repair job when Syrdian’s eyes opened again. Syrdian lifted hies head, “Qes?” Seeing Dex, Syrdian said, “Where’s Qes?”

  Dex shrugged hies wings, “Gone.”

  Syrdian relaxed back down, “Hie must have gone for help from the tribe.”

  Wide eyed, Dex wanted to shake Syrdian. Hie thought, didn’t you hear himr call you “dyatso” as hie left you here alone, but for me? Dex’s eyes narrowed. If Syrdian really couldn’t fly with the holes in hies wings sutured shut hie probably was dyatso. The heat of summer would be upon them soon. Migration to the south would begin tomorrow. Life here in the heat of summer would be impossible. Dex had sometimes wondered if it would be possible to live in this area if you moved higher on the mountain. Everyone knew it was cooler as you went up. Harder to fly because the air was thinner but doable. But to get higher on the mountain without flying? Syrdian would have to walk through a lot of forest. Despite the fact that Qes had hidden from the talor in the forest, the forest wasn’t safe. There were many large wingless predators in there. Thinking of that, Dex looked carefully over the verge to make sure one of those large forest predators wasn’t sizing them up from just inside the trees. Hie didn’t see any large infrared objects, only the expected smaller animals. He puffed his lips, tasting the air, “Syrdian? We should move farther from the verge,” hie said. “Who knows what might be lurking there.”

  Syrdian’s head rose, turning violently to allow himr to study the verge himrself, “Why? Do you see something?”

  “No, but by the time we see it, it might be too late.”

  Syrdian got to hies feet and said, “OK, let’s move.” Hie looked at hies wing, “Hey the hole is gone!”

  “I tied back the sutures Qes cut out.”

  Syrdian looked at Dex, then at hies wing, then back at Dex, “You really did sew my wing up like you do your leatherwork?”

  Dex nodded, turning to walk back to the talor. Flying back when Syrdian couldn’t seemed rude.

  When they reached the talor, Syrdian said, “Look at all that meat! I’m hungry!”

  Dex said, “Shall we cook some?”

  “Do you know how?”

  Dex shrugged, “Sure. Not like they do it at the cave, but well enough to eat.”

  “OK,” Syrdian said, crouching and looking expectantly at Dex.

  ***

  Qes stared disconsolately into the distance, how could this have happened to me? This morning he’d been on top of the world, highly ranked in the tribe, nearly mated to the beautiful Syrdian. Syrdian, likely the highest ranked among the tribe’s youth. They’d been pseudo mating for days now and this morning Syrdian had suggested that they sneak away to their favorite meadow to do it again.

  Now, with the beautiful Syrdian mutilated, Qes would have to find another potential mate. A difficult task with many of the higher ranked youth already committed to others.

  Briefly Qes wondered if there was any way that Syrdian could survive? A shiver ran over hies wings, obviously not. Even if Syrdian somehow made it back to the cave through the forest, the migration would be tomorrow and there would be no way for Syrdian to fly south, nor to survive the summer heat if hie stayed here. And… if Syrdian somehow survived… Qes didn’t want to be mated to a mutilated, low status, Syrdian.

  Qes dreaded hies return to the cave. When Syrdian didn’t return dalins would ask Qes if hie’d seen himr. Especially Syrdian’s parents. Qes’d have to deny seeing Syrdian or they’d want himr to lead them to the meadow. Hie shrugged hies wings, crueler really, to take them to Syrdian and have them find himr with a mutilated wing. Then they’d all have to come to grips with Syrdian’s eventual death. No, better and kinder not to tell them what had happened. Let them think Syrdian had died immediately at the hands of a talor… or something else. Better by far than seeing himr alive and having to leave himr to hies death. Qes didn’t have to even admit to being with Syrdian when it happened.

  Hie shouldn’t return until nearly dark to eliminate the chance that they’d go out searching and find Syrdian by some unlucky chance. A flightless Syrdian couldn’t possibly be able to survive the night, thus sparing hies parents the pain of finding Syrdian mutilated and begging for the help they couldn’t give.

  Chapter Two

  Norris walked over to where Donsaii still sat with the others staring at a screen. “I agree except for clause 2.6 where I would want to limit that to one year as well.”

  Donsaii’s eyes narrowed a moment, then she smiled, “OK. My AI’s recording this as a binding contract, do you agree?”

  Norris shrugged, “Sure.”

  “Great, look at this with us.”

  Donsaii turned the screen they were looking at a little toward him and he saw an image of Earth from space. Although… he tilted his head curiously… The cloud cover was really heavy… Could it be Venus? No he saw a swath of blue in a break in the clouds. Norris narrowed his eyes and said, “That’s more clouds than I’ve ever seen…” He looked at the four of them and they were all grinning widely. He looked back at the screen, “What is this?”

  Kenner said in a hushed voice, “That’s the third planet of Tau Ceti.”

  Norris stared at her, then at Donsaii, then back at the screen. The skin prickled on his scalp, “How?”

  Emmerit said, “The girls here sent a rocket out there with a camera.”

  “Oh Jeez,” Norris put a hand down on the table and leaned on it, taking an almost gasping breath. “Really? How?” He looked at the screen again, “Is that blue showing through the clouds?”

  “Yeah, oxygen, nitrogen, CO2 atmosphere,” Emmerit whispered reverently. “We’re assuming the blue is water. Initially, when the planet looked white from far away we thought it must be an ice world. It’s pretty far out at the outer edge of the ‘habitable zone’ where the temperature should be right for liquid water. We assumed it would be mostly frozen. There’s more CO2 than Earth and quite a bit of methane that may be boosting the greenhouse effect”

  “My God! There must be some kind of life to create the oxygen. What does it look like?”

  Donsaii shrugged. “We don’t know. We haven’t sent anything down into the atmosphere yet. There is a huge green area in the southern hemisphere though; we’re thinking maybe some kind of ‘supercontinent’ like the original Pangaea here on Earth? Maybe the green means something like chlorophyll?”

  Norris’ eyes widened even further, “Really?”

  “Yeah, so that’s what we’ve been working on. We’re trying to design a vehicle that won’t contaminate TC3 with our organisms and vice versa. Then we can go down and have a look.”

  “TC3?”

  “Short for Tau Ceti Three. We don’t have a name for it yet. Here, look at this.”

  The screen filled with a diagram of a rocket. Donsaii said, “We can send data back through PGR chips, so that avoids any transfer of organisms as long as we sterilize the rocket before we put it through the port to TC3. However, normally we have ports sending LOX and LNG to the main rocket motor and just plain compressed gas through ports to act as attitude jets. Now our plan is to use steam for the attitude jets, since that should be sterile. At first we were thinking that the cold would kill organisms in the LOX and LNG that we use for our main rocket propellants. However, we’ve since learned that cryogenic temperatures are actually used to preserve bacteria. Now, microbes should be killed in the rocket’s flame, but what about the little puffs of gas that leak out
right before ignition? We’ve been thinking about putting something toxic in the first puffs so that it will be sterile until the flame starts but then we’d be squirting toxic stuff into the atmosphere there… And the mechanics of putting something toxic in the initial puffs are problematic.” She frowned.

  Norris said, “How about using ethanol. Bacteria are killed in alcohols.”

  Emmerit frowned, “That’d be good, but we’d still have bacteria in the liquid oxygen.”

  “Use hydrogen peroxide as your oxidizer, bacteria die in that too.”

  “So both propellants are bactericidal, but not horribly toxic and they burn to water and CO2.” Donsaii mused.

  Norris said, “Well, they’re both kinda toxic at high concentrations.”

  Ell shrugged “No toxic exhaust at least. Great idea!” she smiled broadly at him, “Already glad to have you aboard.” She looked around at her little group, “Remember, we can’t use port supplied fuel cells to power the stuff on board the rocket either. We don’t want to leak bacteria through those ports either. I’m figuring that we have to keep the fuel cell here and send sterilized wire through a hot interface into tiny ports in the rocket. The wires can supply the power for the camera, PGR chips and ports. Maybe we should start supplying power through wires to all our ports, even here on Earth?”

  Eyebrows rose over that idea, though Norris didn’t really understand the issue. They went back to discussing how to assemble a sterile rocket. Or a sterilizable rocket anyway. Then what instruments to put on the first rocket to descend to the surface of TC3? Norris suggested instruments to measure gravity, atmospheric composition and a DNA detection instrument.

  “DNA? Surely alien life will use a different molecule for encoding genetic data?”

  Norris shrugged, “One theory is that DNA in bacterial spores or viral capsids could have spread all around the universe on stellar winds and by explosions of supernovae. Such DNA could have re-evolved life on each new world.” He raised his eyebrows, “We have no idea if this theory is true, but now we can find out.”

  Eventually, his world view sorely shaken, Norris left D5R with video of TC3 and a number of samples of asteroid 2019 UB40.

  As Ell walked Norris out, Emma smiled up at Roger. “I thought you explained things very nicely to Norris.”

  “You did?” Roger said, trying to remember what he’d explained well. “Thanks.” He looked momentarily at Emma. She’d done something interesting with her hair. It looked like a curly tangle, but he suspected a purposeful tangle. Anyway it looked good. “Hey, you know it’s a lot of fun working with you. Too bad you weren’t in Johnson’s lab with us back at NCSU.”

  Emma wrinkled her nose at him, “Nope, I could never have worked with Johnson!” She tilted her head. “Maybe it would have been OK if you’d been assigned to the Sponchesi lab…”

  Roger grinned at her, “Nah, I never get the easy way out.” He winked.

  ***

  Dex thought that Syrdian was nothing like the wonderful, competent dalin hie’d always pictured when admiring himr from afar. Hie seemed to be waiting for Dex to do everything. To be fair Syrdian was injured, but it was only hies wing. The selfless and wonderful Syrdian hie’d always imagined would have pitched in to help with hies perfectly functional hands. Dex examined the verge for infrared, then beat into the air and flew close to it puffing to take the scent of the air there. It smelled safe. Hie landed by a dead tree and quickly picked up some deadwood, one branch of which had a cluster of dead leaves. A few beats took himr back to Syrdian and the talor. Hie cleared the grass off an area and shredded some of the dry leaves. Hie pulled out hies flint and striker and struck a few sparks that started the shredded leaves burning. Dex laid a few dry sticks on the leaves and then a couple of larger branches. Once the fire was burning hie flew back to cut some straight green sticks. Soon hie had some pieces of talor speared on a stick and suspended over the fire. During the entire time Syrdian watched with interest as if hie’d never seen anything cooked in hies life. Hasn’t hie ever even watched while food is being prepared back at the cave? Dex wondered. Why isn’t hie helping?! Is it just that hie doesn’t want to sully himrself by helping a “low status” like me?

  When Dex took the meat off the fire and cut off pieces for Syrdian and himrself hie could see that hie’d had it too close to the fire. The outside was a little burned while the inside was just past warm. Dex wished hie had some salt to season the meat, but it was quite a flight to the nearest lick that Dex knew of.

  Syrdian bit into one of hies pieces. “It’s tough!” hie exclaimed.

  Dex shrugged hies wings, “Predators usually are.”

  Syrdian laid hies piece of talor down, “I’ll wait for them to bring something better.”

  Dex’s eyes widened. Syrdian still didn’t seem to have any idea how serious hies situation was. “Uh…” Dex began but found hie couldn’t continue. What would I say? “Your lover Qes has given you up for dead and has almost certainly told the tribe that you were killed?” I don’t know that it’s true. Unable to bring himrself to tell Syrdian, hie said nothing after the “Uh.” Hie resumed eating hies talor.

  Syrdian said, “What?” and then when Dex didn’t respond said, “I can’t believe that you’re still eating that.”

  “I think we’re going to be hungry,” Dex said darkly.

  Syrdian frowned, “Why? Surely when they come, they’ll bring food.”

  Dex shrugged hies wings and turned to contemplate nightfall. A lot of ground based predators were out at night. Would a fire keep them away? Would the scent of talor deter them or would the scent of death bring them? “Syrdian?”

  Syrdian had been looking up the mountain in the direction of the cave, as if wondering where hies rescuers were. Hie turned to Dex, “Yes?”

  “I don’t think we should stay here near the talor. Scavengers are going to show up sooner or later. You don’t want to be between a brek and its dinner.”

  Syrdian looked surprised, probably because breks were too slow moving to be threats to a dalin like himrself. But that assumed that the dalin could fly. On the ground breks were pretty fierce. Syrdian’s look became shadowed as hie realized that hie actually could become a tasty morsel for a brek. “OK, where do you think we should move?”

  “Over between some of the rocks over there,” Dex pointed a wing. “Not exactly a cave, but as good as we can get here. I’ll fly over and look for a good place, you carry over a brand from the fire?”

  Syrdian shrugged hies wings, “OK.” Hie picked up a reasonable brand from the fire and turned to go.

  Dex picked up several of the sticks he’d brought earlier, “Can you take some wood too? I don’t want to make a lot of trips.”

  Looking irritated, Syrdian stopped and went back for more. “Why do we want a fire over there? We aren’t cooking anymore.”

  “Keep away predators,” Dex said, beating into the air. Hie flew above the rocks where they stuck up to form their little ridge near one side of the meadow. Three of them closed off a small area and hie landed there, waving a wing at Syrdian. Hie cleared a small area at the front edge of the closed off area and laid the wood hie’d brought there. Then hie beat into the air and back across the meadow to the dead wood at the verge. Once again hie checked visually and puffed hies mouth, sucking air over the olfactory patches on hies lips to smell for predators. Not smelling any predators hie landed and loaded up with more wood.

  Dex made another trip but when hie returned with the load of wood found that Syrdian had piled all of Dex’s first load on the fire. The flames had risen so high that Syrdian had had to leave the rock enclosure. “You put it all on the fire? Why!”

  “Why did you get so much wood?” Syrdian asked indignantly.

  “So we’d have some for later!” Dex said exasperatedly.

  “Later?! Why?”

  “Syrdian! What if no one from the tribe comes! If we’re here all night, we’ll need fire to keep predators away! I won’t be able to go get mo
re wood in the middle of the night.”

  “Why wouldn’t they come?” Syrdian asked in amazed tone.

  “Qes…” Dex said disdainfully, then paused, unable to think how to remind Syrdian what Qes had said.

  “Qes what?” Syrdian snapped indignantly.

  “Qes called you dyatso! Hie hasn’t gone for help, you’re dead to himr.”

  “Hie wouldn’t!”

  “Hie did. You heard himr, you just won’t admit it to yourself.”

  “Wouldn’t.” Syrdian turned to look off over the trees in the direction of the cave. Waiting, presumably, for some dalins to wing into view, thus proving Dex wrong.

  “I’m going to go get more wood.” Dex said disgustedly, “Don’t put any more on the fire.”

  Dex made six trips to the verge and back and built up quite a pile of wood. Syrdian simply sat and stared sullenly up the mountain. Dex made another trip to the talor and brought back meat. This time hie had to chase away some dlak that were scavenging the carcass. As hie sat, cutting the meat into strips and hanging it near the fire to dry, hie wondered why hie was staying with Syrdian. Yes, Syrdian was beautiful and yes Dex had longed for Syrdian for… forever. But now that hie’d actually spent time with Syrdian hie found himr annoying and… shallow. And, worst of all, incompetent to take care of himrself! Dex felt like hie was staying out of sympathy now, not out of hies previously misguided sense of love.

  Just before the sun went down Dex flew back to the verge and cut four straight shafts about hies height. After dark hie trimmed and peeled them, then sharpened a point onto one end of each of them. He carefully fire hardened their points. Such pointed staves were supposed to be useful for fending off predators though hie’d never used one himrself. Hie laid two staves on each side of the fire and then leaned the others against the big rock at the back of the small enclosure. He crouched down back there himrself. Partly because it was too warm by the fire and also because hie worried about something dropping down from above. Hie tried to reassure himrself that the big flying predators like talors didn’t fly at night. Besides, they were afraid of fire, weren’t they?