She sighed, a rasping groan from her lungs. “They are dangerous.”
He nodded involuntarily. They very well might be. But how did she know that? How did she know that the craft was a manned shuttle? Or that they were planning to land? “You’ve been in communication with the Earth ship.” It was an accusation, not a question.
She stared long and hard. The fire in her eyes faded. A slow, stiff nod confirmed his suspicions. “The Secretary-General has been negotiating with their leaders. They won’t listen to reason.”
“You hid it from us. All this time you knew they were coming, what they intended, and you kept us in the dark.” The realization struck Ari square in the chest—he knew more than was good for him. “And just what is my mission?” His voice quivered.
“We cannot allow them to contaminate the ecosystem. I am truly sorry.”
“You uploaded a virus with your data packet. Took over control of my magsails.” A glance at the HUD overlay showed the orbits still intersecting, despite the Earth shuttle’s evasive maneuvers. Even a light craft like the skimmer—maybe 150 kilos of man and support frame—became a deadly projectile at orbital speed. He would do significant damage to the Earth shuttle, if not turn it to slag.
She sat motionless for an eternity, while Ari waited to hear his death sentence. The oxygen-use telltale flashed yellow in his faceplate, and he realized that he was breathing fast and hard. Finally she spoke. “So many sacrifices.”
So that’s it. “Let me talk to Maura. You owe me at least that much.”
Her head moved sluggishly from side to side. “I can’t allow you to communicate with anyone on the ship. I’ll relay a message for you.”
“No, thanks.”
“Who is your gestational mother, young man?”
“You are.”
Her gaze wavered for just a moment. “Oh. There have been so many.” Her eyes no longer focused on Ari, but on the distant past behind him.
He broke contact, allowing his silence to speak for him. Her image winked out, leaving him with nothing but the drumbeat of his pulse in his ears. The stars ahead, just above the horizon line, wavered with atmospheric distortion. The living landscape below slid past him as he drifted inexorably toward extinction. What price is too high to preserve an entire ecosystem? The Director had made her answer clear.
“Uh, Ari?” He jerked to attention at the sound of the Earthman’s voice in his helmet. “You mind shifting course away from us?”
Damn. “Um, yeah. I have a real problem here. You need to abort your landing. Head back to your ship.”
“No can do. Orders and all that.”
“Listen. The Secretary-General is serious about this. If you try to land, we’re going to be orbital debris.”
“Aw, hell. Why would you want to do that?”
“She’s using me as a guided missile and I can’t do a damn thing about it.”
“This thing steers like a pig, son. Even if I started a burn right now, you’d be here before I broke orbit.”
“I don’t think we’re going to live through this.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Bill’s voice came through soft and gentle. “You may not. I have orders to blast you out of the sky if need be.”
They brought weapons. For a brief moment, the thought was more disturbing than Ari’s own impending death.
He wondered what kind of weapons they had. Projectile launchers, laser weapons, particle beams? His gaze dropped to the living world below and he wondered how they might devastate the pristine ecosystem. We spent our lives worried about the consequences of a single microorganism wreaking havoc. What about a swarm of armed Earthmen?
But what about his own people—his own gestational mother—only too willing to kill for a planet they’d never even touched?
He was dropping low over Nouvelle Terre’s pole, heading for perigee near the equator. His HUD showed the magsail maneuvering loops pulsing with current, pushing against the planet’s intense magnetic field to shift his orbit. Adjusting to the Earth shuttle’s maneuvers. He tried in vain to crank up the current in the main thrusting loop to increase his speed and push himself into a higher orbit. Perigee kick. The nanoprocessor refused his commands. If only he had some way to adjust the magnetic fields.
Particle beams.
He inhaled sharply at the idea. He just might live through this after all. But the Earthmen would live too, and they’d surely land. What cost is too high?
“You there, Bill?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“How long do I have?”
“We’ll have to hit you as soon as we have line of sight. Even so, dodging the debris will be dicey.”
“I need to know why.”
“Why what?”
“You have to know that landing on the surface will do immeasurable damage. Even if you don’t harm the ecology directly, you’ll destroy the opportunity to study it. It’ll be contaminated, and we’ll never know what it was like before. Why would you do that?”
Ari heard an exhaled sigh. “Hell, kid, no one wants to despoil your world. We’re just looking for a new home. You know, a place to raise children without fear of pollution or fallout.”
“But you don’t know how Earth life will interact with the life down there.” He swept his arm across the expanse of the world below him as though Bill could see him. “We’ll never get another chance to study the ecosystem in its natural state.”
“I’m not here to debate philosophy with you, son. All I know is that we need a place to live. Think how much more we can learn by getting up close and personal with the life down there.”
“We already know a lot. We…” And what do we know, really? We’ve been here for a generation. “We know how the pseudoplants down there do photosynthesis. We know they use something called pyranosyl-RNA for their genes. We know… we know a lot. I’m not a scientist.” His words didn’t sound convincing, even to his own ears.
There was a long pause. “You’re going to be coming over the horizon soon and I’m going to have to…” His voice caught, as though unwilling to say the words. “I’m gonna have to do something I don’t want to do.”
“Can you hit me with a beam of charged particles?” He hadn’t realized he was going to say it until the words came out. His heart pulsed in his ears.
“Uh, yeah, I’m sure we could rig something, but why—oh, I get it. The beam will push against your magsail and deflect your path, almost like a particle beam launch system. Brilliant. But the radiation would fry you.”
“It would fry an Earthman. Maybe not me.”
Ari heard Bill whistle loud and low. “You have balls of steel, kid.”
“One more thing. My ship’s blocking my transmissions. There’s someone I’d like to talk to before this goes down.”
“No problem.” Ari could practically hear him grin. “I can punch a signal through anything they’ve got.”
Nothing to do but wait and wonder. He looked down at the deep blue ocean below him and was rewarded with a flood of guilt. Is my life really worth the risk to the planet? Risk versus reward. On the surface, they could learn in a year more than we’ve learned in a generation.
“Okay, Ari.” Bill’s voice startled him. “I’ll relay your signal with a little bit of a kick. It’ll get through. Transmit whenever you’re ready.”
He switched to Maura’s comm channel. “Are you there, Maura?”
Her face appeared on his faceplate, grainy and pixelated. “Ari? Are you all right?” As she spoke, her image froze, then jumped once again to real time.