Tau Ceti Read online

  “Radio? PGR?”

  Ell chortled, “Hah! PGR—in my face! Though it’s hard to imagine using PGR for organism to organism communication since it would only hook you up with one other organism.”

  Norris smiled at her, “Maybe they all come from a queen creature that has entangled PGR communication to each of her subsidiary units?”

  Ell grinned, “Hah! In my face again. OK, I’ll grant your point but I’m betting on plain old audio received through those holes between the front and back eyes.”

  Norris grinned back, “And I’m betting with you, but I just don’t want us to anthropomorphize and miss something important.”

  The golden one, which had moved closer, reached out and touched the rocket, causing their view to vibrate and tilt a little. Its eyes approached, presumably for a closer inspection. Then it turned its head back toward the silver one a moment. Then its wings extended and with a few beats it was airborne, taking their rocket with it! Ell snorted, “I was just wondering whether we’d be able to have the rocket follow this creature when it left the area. Not an issue, eh?”

  The group laughed with her. Emma said, “We’ve got to give them names to tell them apart when we’re talking about them. I’m suggesting ‘Goldy’ for this one and ‘Silver’ for the other one?”

  “OK, where are they, or ‘we’ going?”

  They all watched in fascination as Goldy, carrying their rocket and their point of view, flared in to a landing at the forest verge.

  ***

  At the verge, Dex puffed hies lips for the scent of predator while pulling a pair of hies carrying straps off hies harness.

  When hie felt fairly certain it was safe hie set the meteorite down and cut a small branch off a limb. The end of it fit into one of the holes in the meteorite and Dex tied it to the carrying strap, then around the shaft of the meteorite. Hie did the same thing at the other end, then tied the two straps to hies harness so that the meteorite laid along the right side of hies chest. One of the legs at the bottom dug into hies abdomen. Hie tugged at the leg wondering how to keep it from irritating himr. To hies amazement all the legs suddenly retracted down against the meteorite! Hie moved around, it felt fine now.

  “What are you doing with the meteorite?” Syrdian asked coming up behind-left himr.

  “Taking it with me. I’ve always liked meteorites.”

  “Why?”

  Dex shrugged hies wings and stepped through the verge into the forest. Hies backeyes showed Syrdian following. In a few paces the underbrush thinned out for lack of light because of the thick canopy high overhead. Dex stopped and looked around once again for any large infrared objects that might be predators. Hie puffed hies lips to smell as well. It seemed clear and so hie led the way uneasily up the mountain. Hie didn’t like being in a situation where hie couldn’t fly to safety.

  “What are we going to eat?” Syrdian asked.

  Irritably Dex said, “I hope you’re working on figuring that out.”

  “Figuring it out? How?”

  “How do you think anything ever gets figured out? Somebody thinks about it and tries to come up with a solution. You have been hunting and gathering haven’t you?”

  “Elders have always shown me how to do things Dex” Syrdian said quietly. “I have been hunting and gathering, yes, but never without flying.”

  “Well it’s not as bad as it could be, I can fly. But I might not be able to catch enough food for both of us. I can scout. I can catch some of it. But what if something happens to me?”

  “Like you decide not to stay with me?” Syrdian almost whispered.

  Dex stopped and turned. “No! We’re walking through the forest. I could be attacked and killed.” Hie took a deep breath, “I’m planning to stay with you Syrdian, but you know everyone else in the tribe would leave you rather than risk their own lives by not migrating. They wouldn’t even walk through the forest with you.”

  Syrdian hung hies head, “I know. I know and I’m scared. I wouldn’t have stayed with you and I’m ashamed.” Hie raised hies head, “I’m grateful, I really am. I hope that someday I can repay you somehow.”

  Despite hies recent recognition of Syrdian’s selfishness, Dex had to resist the urge to wrap arms and wings around the still beautiful Syrdian. “Well for now, try being quiet so we’ll have a chance of hearing predators. And keep watch for large infrared objects and puff for predator’s scent.”

  Obediently Syrdian pursed lips to pull air into hies mouth over the olfactory patches inside hies lips, turning hies head to look around.

  Dex stepped out again, heading uphill and wondering how hie’d let himrself promise Syrdian that hie’d stay.

  Dex had wearied of the long walk uphill through the unending dimness of the forest. The constant flittering about of the small forest fliers irritated himr. A couple of small territorial flitters had attacked himr and one had attacked Syrdian. They couldn’t do a lot of harm but trying to bat them away frustrated himr. Hie mused on how hard it was to walk up this hill compared to the easy glide down over it yesterday. Suddenly Syrdian hissed, “Dex! I smell a predator!”

  Dex looked around and saw a large infrared spot to hies right. Hie strained to see something besides the ill-defined infrared blob. Reaching back hie whispered back, “Give me two of the staves.”

  Syrdian handed two of the staves with their fire hardened points over and held the points of the other two staves toward the animal himrself. They stood waiting and wondering. After a few minutes the infrared blob moved closer, passing near a small shaft of sunlight. Dex thought it looked like a zornic, a medium sized forest omnivore. It was bigger than hie and Syrdian together and doubtless would eat them if it could, but maybe… Dex raised himrself to full height and spread hies wings, whispering to Syrdian, “Lift your wings, make yourself big!”

  The zornic stopped, then slowly backed away.

  As the zornic faded out of sight, Dex turned and began trudging up the mountain again. Syrdian whispered excitedly, “That was amazing! How did you know it would back away if you lifted your wings?”

  “I think it was a zornic, they never leave the forest, eating carrion and plants and occasionally killing something. But, I wondered if, always living in the forest, its regular vision might not be very good and it might mostly see infrared. And it wouldn’t have seen many winged animals or know that we weren’t really as big as our wings make us look. I’m supposing it thought a really big animal had just stood up and might eat it so it took off.”

  ***

  The group watched the view from the rocket’s camera zoom up to the edge of the forest and stop, presumably as Goldy landed. The view wiggled a little then stabilized at a slight tilt. Goldy stepped past their viewpoint and grabbed a small branch. Pulling out a wicked looking knife it cut a piece a couple of inches long off of it. Norris said, “Is that a flint knife?” It had a rippled surface but none of them knew for sure what a flint knife looked like. Goldy came back to the rocket and wiggled the rocket a little as it worked on it, just below the camera they were watching through.

  Ell said, “I think it’s shoving that stick into one of the attitude thrusters! Why in the world...?”

  In a moment Goldy brought a strap into view and seemed to be working with it, this time leaning close as if wrapping the leather strap around the rocket. Again, he was working just below the view of the camera. Then Goldy crouched out of view with another piece of stick and another strap in his hands. More wiggling ensued.

  Norris turned to the others, “Do you suppose he’s plugging one of the lower attitude jets too, and tying the plugs in place with the leather straps? If so why?”

  Manuel said, “Maybe he’s…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure? Maybe he’s attaching a carry strap?” A moment later Goldy stood and lifted the rocket up to his chest as evidenced by one of the screens showing nothing but a close up view of a fuzzy chest. Goldy’s hand could be seen working around the rocket, blocking fir
st one then another of the cameras as it moved. The bottom camera which had shown the ground now was up in the air showing Goldy’s birdlike feet. Manuel said, “Maybe just using the attitude thrusters as convenient attachment points for strapping the rocket to his harness.”

  No one said anything because Manuel was obviously correct, but the screens kept wiggling back and forth. Emma said, “I’ll bet she can’t get it comfortable because the legs are digging into her tummy.”

  Ell said, “Retract the legs.” A moment later the wiggling stopped.

  Roger said, “She? Are you seeing sexual characteristics that I’m missing?”

  Emma elbowed him, “No, but you guys are calling her a ‘he’ which I see no evidence of either. So I’m calling her a ‘she’ until we know. They may not even have sexes!”

  Grinning, Roger rolled his eyes but said nothing. Their view moved forward into the forest. The view darkened and then brightened up as the AI compensated though some of the contrast was lost in the low lighting condition.

  A long period of walking through the forest followed. Shortly it got boring. “Why are they walking instead of flying?” Roger asked.

  Norris said, “Maybe there’s something in the forest that they want and they can’t fly to it through the trees?”

  “I don’t know, the boles of those trees are pretty far apart and their wings are pretty short.”

  Norris shrugged, “I really have no idea. Maybe their flying agility isn’t up to weaving around all the trees?

  As the hike settled down to walking uphill and nothing else Emma went off to work on a laser acoustic pickup for the rocket. Ell turned to the others, “This is exciting but it’s also kind of boring. I’m thinking that at most we should have one of us watching and telling the rest of us if something exciting happens?” She looked around at the others who all nodded. “I don’t mind taking the graveyard shift from midnight to 6.”

  Norris laughed and said, “Sad to say, I’m an early to bed, early to rise person. I’m always up at 4AM. I don’t have a class until 8 so it’d be easy for me to do 4-7:30.”

  Roger said, “Why do we have to watch in real time? Why not just record the video. Then cruise through it at high speed later looking for the interesting parts?”

  “What happens if Goldy starts to take the rocket apart?

  “How would we stop him?”

  “Fire up the engine, fly away if necessary?”

  Emma signed up for 6 to 10PM so Ell took 10PM to 4AM. Wilson, Manuel and Roger all wanted to take shifts but Manuel was worried about how to handle a shift when he might be urgently needed to make things in the machine shop. Roger had to work around meetings with Bynewicz and Mullis. “But maybe Wilson, Manuel and I could work things out between us to cover the daytime hours each day?”

  Wilson said, “My other assignments can be worked whenever I’m not busy with this, so I’ll take the daytime observation whenever you two can’t be available. When you guys can observe I’ll do my other work.”

  Ell said, “We need to bring someone else in on this. Our group is kinda small for something this huge?”

  Norris said, “How about hiring a student? Bridget’s friend Belle Donovan from my Planetary Science class is astonishingly smart. She’s killing all the tests and really enthusiastic about this kind of stuff. Students are usually pretty excited to have jobs where they don’t have to do much. Would you like me to ask her? Or you could get Bridget to ask her?” He looked back and forth. Roger and Emma were grinning at Ell who looked embarrassed. Manuel looked as puzzled as Norris felt. “What?”

  Ell looked down at the floor and blushed, “Sorry Dr. Norris, but I need you to keep another secret for me. I am ‘Belle.’ I wanted to take your class but it causes a lot of problems when I go to public places like the campus as ‘Ell.’” She shrugged, “So I wear a disguise.”

  Dumbfounded, Norris stared at Donsaii, trying to reconcile Belle’s long platinum blond hair, chipmunk cheeks, acne and thick hips with the beautiful young woman in front of him. Despite her flaws Belle was cute, but compared to Ell… He’d never seen anyone who could hold a candle to Ell, stunning no matter what she wore. Why would anyone disguise themselves that way? He looked at the grinning Roger and Emma, “Are you guys kidding me?”

  Emma laughed, “Nope. Believe it or not, that’s really her.”

  Flummoxed, Norris leaned back and gave way to a guffaw.

  Ell cleared her throat, “But if you have any other students you think we could trust, we’d be happy to hire them. Meantime, how about if we start designing a followup rocket, like this one but with a microphone and speaker? A swiveling camera? Maybe some other means for communication?”

  The team worked on a plan for the new rocket as the aliens, or “Teecees” as they had begun calling them, clambered through the forest for hours. They stopped to watch for a few minutes when Goldy and Silver stopped and confronted a large wingless animal with their pointed sticks. The animal walked on four limbs. Coming off its back in a location that seemed somewhat analogous to Goldy and Silver’s wings there were two large limbs that reminded Norris of a gorilla’s arms. Goldy and Silver stood tall and lifted their wings and the animal stopped, then turned and ambled away.

  They worked out most of the requirements for the new rocket but decided to finalize the actual plan when Emma had picked some of the actual components. Satisfied, they shut down the screens in the conference room and headed home. Emma started her shift watching the aliens’ progress on her HUD but when she got home she put it up on her big screen.

  ***

  A couple deks later Dex and Syrdian climbed down into one of the ravines and drank their fill of water then filled their water skins. As they climbed back onto the ridge they were following up the mountain they came to an enormous meadow. Dex distantly remembered the fire that had cleared this area. The huge area had some small trees clumping up in a few areas but the grasses and other small meadow plants were still holding their own over most of it. Hie turned to Syrdian, “I think we should stay in that clump of little trees near the high end. Can you clear a spot and start a fire?”

  Syrdian narrowed hies eyes, “What are you going to do?”

  “Try to catch some food.”

  “Oh, OK. Yes. Thanks.”

  Dex beat into the air gratefully, tired of walking. Hie lifted along the tree line and once hie had altitude, curled out in a glide over the meadow, watching carefully for prey animals or food plants. Hie saw a patch of large flat leaves that hie thought signaled tubers and almost missed the burrower sitting near them, facing the other way. With a curl of hies left main wing and a flip of hies back wings hie stooped on the burrower, reaching out at the last moment for it. It saw himr coming with its weak back eyes and darted for its burrow. Dex banked hard and stretched out hies left hindclaw, touching but not catching it.

  Landing, Dex stepped over to the burrow pulling out hies roll of heavy fiberlin. A pace away hie found some of the burrower’s scat to rub on hies hands and the fiberlin. Hie placed a noose of fiberlin around the inside of the burrow a few inches down inside. Then hie tied it to a hooked stick hie cut off a branching stem. More fiberlin connected the hook-trigger to a sapling hie bent. Hie hooked the trigger stick on the rock at the edge of the burrow so the tip of the stick obstructed the hole. When the burrower came out and bumped the stick aside, the bent sapling would snap up, pulling the noose tight. Unfortunately the burrower might get itself free if Dex didn’t get there in time so hie’d have to listen for it. Dex then dug a couple of disappointing tubers up from the plants hie’d seen.

  Sighing in disappointment hie beat into the air and over to Syrdian who was clearing a spot under five small trees for a fire. Syrdian looked askance at the tubers, “From the way you stooped I thought you’d gone after an animal we could eat.”

  “I did.” Hie shrugged hies wings, “I missed. These are better than nothing.”

  For a moment Dex thought that Syrdian would to turn hies nose up at
the tubers but instead hie said, “Do you want me to cook them?”

  “That’d be great! I set a trap. I’m going to go watch it.” Hie untied the meteorite from hies harness and leaned it up against one of the trees. A couple beats lofted himr into a glide down to the burrow. Just before hie landed hie thought better of it and after coasting past the burrow hie beat up into the air to circle high over the burrow, examining the surrounding terrain for any other possibilities. Hie saw a couple of other burrows though the burrowers themselves weren’t evident. After checking the one with the snare hie coasted down to the next burrow. This one didn’t have any rock to hook the trigger on so hie had to cut and drive a stake to hook the trigger on. Then, in frustration, hie realized that hie didn’t have enough fiberlin to reach the closest sapling. Looking around hie saw a worn path from the burrow running beneath the sapling. Hie cut a notch for hies trigger hook near the bottom of the sapling, bent the sapling, hooked the trigger and ran the noose from there to drape over the path. Then hie beat up into the air and over to Syrdian, pleased to see a small fire burning with the tubers spitted over it.

  Syrdian said, “I thought you were going to watch your trap?”

  “I set another one. I think we’ll be able to see and hear them go off from here. I’m really hungry, how about you?”

  “Yeah, I could even eat some talor.”

  Dex looked sharply at Syrdian and saw himr grinning ruefully, “Me too.”

  Syrdian said, “I’m afraid to ask, but why don’t you fly back to the cave? I think my parents would come for me. Then you wouldn’t have to do this.”

  Dex looked off into the distance, “And what if they told me that you’re dyatso? What if they won’t let me come back?”

  Syrdian’s hearts hammered, “But, but my parents… wouldn’t…”

  “Don’t be too sure. You know the tribe’s policy. ‘If you can’t fly the migration, you’re dyatso. You must fend for yourself.’”