"So Melaquin has all the comforts of home," I said. "Why is it so deadly?"
"Microorganisms?" Chee suggested. "A planet with life must have bacteria, and thousands of diseases for which we have no immunity."
"Unquestionably… but we'll breathe canned air and wear the usual protective gear," I told him. "The skin of a tightsuit can't be penetrated by the smallest virus we know; and the pressure inside is kept higher than atmospheric pressure outside, so any microbe that comes close to penetrating the suit's skin is blown right back out again."
"What about organisms that can digest tightsuits?"
"There are five different kinds of tightsuits," Yarrun explained, "each made from a different material. Standard procedure is for each party member to wear a different type of suit. It's extremely unlikely that microbes would eat through each material at exactly the same rate, so if one of us gets a suit breach, the others should have some warning before their suits go too. And of course, death by disease is not instantaneous; even the most virulent bugs we know need at least an hour to multiply to lethal levels. During that hour, our suit sensors would surely notice some sign we're in trouble — loss of suit pressure, spread of alien organisms through our bodies, deterioration of body functions — not to mention we'll know we're getting sick without any help from the electronics."
"By then it could be too late," Chee said.
"Almost certainly," Yarrun agreed. "But we would still have time to communicate with the ship and describe the problem. Sickness is a valid reason to demand immediate pickup; and then we'd only have to hold out another five minutes before we were back on the ship. Even if we died on board, our bodies must be sent to the Explorer Academy for examination, at which point the whole secret would come out."
"Not if the High Council suppressed the information," I muttered.
Yarrun shrugged. "Secrets are flimsy things — spread them among too many people, and they get torn.
Maybe the council could suppress information about a single Landing… maybe even a handful of Landings. But if people go missing on a regular basis, there are too many leaks to catch. Admiral, how many people has the council has sent to Melaquin?"
Chee thought for a moment. "Maybe one or two a year. And they've been doing this for at least forty years. They certainly couldn't suppress hard evidence that long."
"Which means that whatever the danger is on Melaquin, it hits the party too fast for anyone to collect hard evidence."
"Do you have any ideas what it might be?" Chee asked.
Feeling like a cadet reciting a case study, I said, "On Canopus IV, there's a plant that spreads its seeds by exploding violently. In the right season, the vibration from a single footstep is enough to set it off. Five parties were killed there before one team spread out and put a hundred meters between each party member. In that team, one Explorer was killed; the others reported back and Canopus IV was eventually tamed."
"So you think we should spread out?"
Yarrun snorted a small laugh. "The planet Seraphar has a race of semi-sentient shapeshifters who would quietly stab Explorers in the back and take their place in the party. Spreading out just made it that much easier for the shape-shifters to do their work. Six parties were killed before one stumbled on the truth."
"Every decision is a gamble," I told the admiral. "In this case, however, we don't need to tax our brains. So many teams have landed on Melaquin, they must have tried all the standard approaches by now. None of those worked, so we're free to do whatever the hell we want."
We spent several moments of silence, contemplating the wealth of freedom presented to us.
No-Comm
"Of course," I said at last, "there's a more pleasant alternative."
"I'm eager to hear it," Chee answered.
"According to my old instructor Phylar Tobit, teams exploring Melaquin don't necessarily go Oh Shit; they just go no-comm. Suppose there's something on the planet that interrupts communications — some kind of interference field."
Yarrun looked thoughtful. "Didn't Tobit suggest that parties can broadcast for a while before being cut off? If the planet has natural interference, it should kill communications right from the start."
"Not necessarily," I answered. "Suppose Melaquin has some kind of standing interference field; but when a ship drops its Sperm tail to land a party, the tail disrupts the field. The Explorers land, the tail is withdrawn… and for a few minutes the party has normal communications. Then the interference reestablishes itself and the party goes no-comm."
"Wouldn't there be some warning?" Chee asked. "Static or something, as the field closed back in."
"If the field closes fast enough, it doesn't matter," Yarrun told him. "To pick up a party, the ship has to drop the Sperm tail in exactly the right spot; and the only way to do that is to lock onto the tracking signal put out by a communicator. The signal is a sort of hypermagnetic anchor that seizes the end of the Sperm and drags it to the party's location. If the signal isn't working, there's no chance a ship could ever plant its tail stably on the surface."
"So you think," Chee said, "there's some kind of field— "
"No, Admiral," I interrupted, "I'm just saying it's one possibility. There must be a dozen other ways to disrupt communications: a trace chemical in the atmosphere that corrodes D-thread circuits; bacteria that like to chew on transducer chips; semi-sentients with the equipment to jam transmissions; periodic bursts of positronic energy that are drawn to communicators like lightning rods…"
"You're pulling my leg on that one, Ramos."
"I hope so," I told him drily.
"The point still stands," Yarrun said. "I'd rather believe in a phenomenon that blanks communicators than one that kills whole parties in the blink of an eye."
Silently, I agreed. I could live with the thought of machines breaking.
The Poles
"You know," Chee said, "perhaps our future isn't so bleak after all. We know the planet is Earthlike. The weather won't be a problem if we pick our landing site carefully enough. We'll have food and water and breathable air — it's an official exile world, so that part is guaranteed."
I shook my head at his naivete. "If we're really planning to survive for any length of time, we'll put down on the edge of polar permafrost and hope we can subsist on scrub vegetation."
"Why?" Chee sounded outraged.
"Because," Yarrun explained, "the colder the region, the less microbial activity there is. When we land, we'll each have twelve hours of canned air; after that, we have to start breathing local atmosphere. Our tightsuits do their best to filter microorganisms from incoming air, but don't expect a hundred percent effectiveness. Theory says we'll live a lot longer if we go where the airborne microbe count is low."
"Theory says?"
"Actual evidence is skimpy," Yarrun shrugged. "No Explorer has come back to tell us either way."
Kicking a Lion in the Ass
"Are we really going to land near the poles?" Chee asked with conspicuous lack of enthusiasm.
Yarrun answered for me. "Festina was joking, in her way. When we land, we want the Jacaranda to remain in geosynchronous position above us so they can pick us up at a moment's notice. However, the Jacaranda was designed as a deep-space ship, and its sublight engines are not very efficient. If it parks close enough to the planet to pick us up, it has to maintain a reasonable speed relative to the planet's center of gravity, or else expend a lot of energy trying to hold altitude. Close to the poles, a hovering flight path is just too slow for the ship to hold very long. We're pretty well restricted to the region between, say, forty-five degrees north and south latitude."