“Why zit look like that?” Hag Lasker said. The twins were fraternal, not identical, with Hag as dark as his brother Rick was fair.
“Like what?”
“Like them funny colors. It’s funny colors down there.”
“You mean, purple and pink?”
“Yeah. Them.”
“Aha! That has to do with the way that plants on Solferino employ the energy of sunlight. You know what chlorophyll is, don’t you?”
Hag stared at Gage as though the man had started to talk Chinese. Josh wasn’t sure of the word, either, but Amethyst, the fat one of the Karpov sisters and the only one who, so far as Josh could see, had a working brain, piped up, “Chlorophyll makes plants green.”
Her sisters scowled at her.
“Indeed it does,” Gage said. “But it does much more than that. It allows plants to use sunlight to convert raw materials—carbon dioxide and water—to foods. Chlorophyll on Earth is actually a mixture of two kinds, one green and one yellow. Plants on Solferino employ only the yellow chlorophyll. Its actual name is ‘xanthophyll.’ But Solferino plants also use another chemical, called ‘rhodopsin.’ Did you ever hear of it?”
This time, nobody spoke. Josh thought he might have heard that word before, too, but he had no idea what it meant. Dawn, for all that he could tell, was off in another world. The Lasker brothers and the Karpov sisters, except for Amethyst, regarded Gage with their usual combination of dislike, incomprehension, and utter lack of interest.
Gage seemed more resigned than surprised. “Rhodopsin,” he went on, “isn’t just found on Solferino. You have it in the retinas of your own eyes. It is necessary in seeing. It can also use the energy in sunlight to make carbohydrates for plants, the same way that chlorophyll does. But rhodopsin is not green or yellow. It’s purple. The plants on Solferino use rhodopsin, and sometimes chlorophyll. Thus, as you’ll see when we land, they range in color from purple to a pinkish yellow. You won’t see much green. But if you do, don’t be tempted to eat something just because it looks familiar. You will vomit more violently than you ever did in free fall. Are there any other questions?”
“Mm.” Ruby Karpov, the youngest of the sisters, had shown no interest in listening to Bothwell Gage. She had been staring out of the lander’s window. “What’s that?”
She pointed a finger—not down, but up. Gage started to say, “Actually, I meant questions about the planet,” but he trailed away on the final word. The lander was entering the atmosphere, and the trainees were beginning to feel weight again as air drag slowed the vehicle. Their ship was on the night side of the planet, where the only thing visible ought to have been stars and Solferino’s single moon. But in front of and above the lander, accelerating steadily away from it, was the long plume of a ship’s exhaust.
“My goodness.” Gage was leaning forward and frowning. “That is certainly not the Cerberus. And it is not a conventional lander.”
Gage continued—not to the trainees, or to himself, but to the lander’s computer. “Tell the Cerberus that we have an unfamiliar ship in sight. I think it is not one of ours. Request a spectral analysis of the exhaust, plus anything else that they can tell us.”
There was a five-second pause, while wild thoughts ran riot through Josh’s head. He had seen this often enough on the tube. A star system far from Earth. Approach to a new planet. An unfamiliar and unexpected ship. Aliens!
Before he could go any farther, the computer’s quiet voice was returning a message. “Identification is complete. The ship visible ahead of the lander is a Unimine M-class vessel, the Charles Lyell.”
“Unimine!” Gage snorted in disbelief or disapproval. “Their ships should not be anywhere near Solferino. Don’t we have exclusive rights to development here?”
There was a brief pause—time enough for a lengthy exchange of data between the lander’s computer and that on the Cerberus.
“That is correct,” the computer said. “Foodlines has exclusive rights to the development of Solferino for twenty years, unless the company chooses to give them up. However, that does not prohibit the Unimine conglomerate access to the space around the planet, or prohibit travel anywhere within this stellar system. In fact, Unimine has exploration rights for Cauldron, one of the lesser and lifeless worlds of this system. The Charles Lyell is recorded as a prospecting ship, but it is capable of planetary landing.”
“Doesn’t our franchise prohibit other landings on Solferino?”
“It does.”
“Then what’s their ship doing here?”
“We do not know.”
“So ask them!” Bothwell Gage’s voice rose to a squeak.
“We did ask them.” A computer could not sound apologetic or puzzled, but its choice of words was significant. “The Charles Lyell is under no obligation to answer our inquiries. Regrettably, it declined to do so. The most logical reason for its presence is that the Unimine ship is employing Solferino in a gravity-assisted swing-by maneuver on its way to the outer system and the planet Cauldron.”
“You think that’s it?”
“It is certainly possible. Unfortunately, our analysis assigns that assumption a probability of only one in ten.”
“So what are you suggesting that we do?” The G forces were affecting everyone on board, and Bothwell Gage’s voice was increasingly distorted.
The computer made a minor adjustment to the lander’s angle of attack, and the deceleration forces lessened. “We have already taken the appropriate action,” it replied. “The presence of a Unimine vessel close to Solferino has been assigned to the general file of unanswered questions.”
Josh was a newcomer to space, and he knew next to nothing about either Foodlines or Unimine operations, but even he could tell that the computer’s answer was hardly one that Bothwell Gage found satisfactory.
Chapter Six
The lander drifted in and came to rest in the middle of a cleared circle about two hundred yards across. The perimeter was surrounded by a seven-foot silver fence of flat posts. Five orange-yellow buildings with small round windows, like the viewing ports on the Cerberus, stood in a cluster well inside the fence.
“Breathing masks on,” Bothwell Gage said. And, when Josh and the others stared at him because he wore no mask himself, “I don’t need one. I’ve been here before, and I’m long since acclimatized. The injections that you had when you left Earth take a few days before they’re completely effective. You could probably breathe the air of Solferino right now with your modified lung alveoli, but I’d rather confirm that when we’re inside a building and have medical equipment handy. Think yourselves lucky. It’s full body suits on Merryman’s Woe.”
He opened the door of the lander and led the way outside. Josh, a light mask in place over his nose and mouth, stepped gingerly onto a surface that felt and looked like a dense purple rug. It was plants, or perhaps all one plant, with springy two-inch stems that flattened under his weight and bounced back upright as soon as he lifted his foot.
He stared around him, noting that the others were all doing the same. The air seemed unnaturally clear. Grisel, the star whose gravity field held Solferino, Cauldron, and the four other planets of the system in orbit, was high in the sky. It was bigger and redder than Sol. Josh had only seen Earth’s sun dull and swollen like that at Burnt Willow Farm, when it was down on the horizon and close to setting. In the city he had never seen a sun like that. The high buildings blocked out sunsets.