A Planet For Emily

CHAPTER TEN

The next port of call was Karl’s Rift, which Rods thought they should go to, and dispose of their business quickly, without seeming to hurry. They could wave aside the schedule for a few days and explain the absence by saying that the engines were giving trouble. That trouble could only be fixed at Fin’s Reef.

“You’ve been asking too many people about El Dorado, Cruise,” said Rods when Suzanne questioned him about the need to explain anything, “and I didn’t stop you because I didn’t think it important. Fortunately, no one’s paid much attention, but if we disappear for any length of time then reappear, and you’ve replaced your endless questions about El Dorado with furtive looks, people will wonder.”

“I don’t do furtive looks,” said Suzanne. “You remember the interrogation? I’m a good enough liar when I need to be.”

“Better not to lie at all. Shut up about El Dorado. If asked just say you’ve given up asking. Above all, you must not even breathe that you know it’s for real and have a location. As I’ve told you before the news would cause pandemonium. No one would talk about anything else. Then the Zards will hear about it.”

“Can’t I tell a couple of people who should know?”

“Cruise, that’s the same as telling everyone. Those people will tell just a couple of people they think can be trusted, and before you know it a Zard fleet is on our doorstep. Those guys will then enslave or execute whoever they can get their hands on while denying the massacre and complaining bitterly that their rights under interstellar law are not being respected. There you are, El Dorado is gone, your sister probably is gone, and all because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”

As it happened, Rods was the one who had to lie, getting stuck with a valuable cargo of semi-processed ore for ship lift crystals, despite his protestations that he would have to go back to his stock of spare parts at Fin’s Reef. That’s on the way, he was told, and that he was the only one the valuable cargo could be entrusted to. Eventually, they departed and at meal times Suzanne found herself sharing the ward room table with assorted pieces of equipment and weaponry which Rods insisted on bringing up from the lockers on C deck. One such item was a container about the size and shape of a pack that hikers on Earth might have worn. Like those packs the container was also designed to be worn on the back, but had an arm arranged so that it wrapped around the body of the wearer to present a small instrument panel to that user.

“It’s a lift pack,” said Rods, noticing Suzanne looking at it.

“And why is it on the table at breakfast?”

“I could use it to drop down into the valley. It’s anti-gravity. Switch it on and you go up. Have it on when you’re falling and can fall at whatever rate you want or go back up. It’s fun to use.”

“If you like that sort of thing,” said Suzanne, “so is this how we’re going to get into the valley?”

“Nope. The pack is for when it gets up close and personal. We’ll leave The Max out of the way somewhere just above the cliffs and take the shuttle in.”

Suzanne had only become aware that The Max had a shuttle a week after coming on board, and only after seeing an area marked shuttle while working on floor plans and asking about it. She found that it was by far the newest part of the ship, being a mere ten years old, and capable of seating maybe 15 people plus the pilot and co-pilot, in comfort and even style.

“Yep,” said Rods when Suzanne mentioned this. “It was salvaged off some swanky cruise ship but with the engines all fouled up. I was able to fix it and paid for it with some cargo hauling. It’s not much use to me normally – we don’t do the sightseeing side trips it was designed for – but I’ll want it someday.”

“You could work on your bits and pieces in the shuttle,” Suzanne said hopefully. “There’s enough room and the annoying cruise director wouldn’t be trying to eat her breakfast next to them.”

“The annoying cruise director has to be shown these items – the information could come in useful if we’re cornered by Hostile life forms and have to shoot our way out.”

“Will we be cornered by Hostile life forms?”

“No idea, but there was something about creatures on the surface. You need to practice with the comms, and strip and clean Mr. Sig Sauer and Mr. Glock, whom I’ve laid out for you, ready for those intimate encounters.”

“I don’t want to take Mr. Glock,” said Suzanne, regarding the pistol sourly. “I feel we’ve grown apart.”

“A couple more dates, Cruise, and when the action gets heavy, you’ll learn to appreciate Mr. Glock’s qualities. If we find your sister, and we’re still in ammunition, you can introduce her to Mr. Sig Sauer.”

“I don’t think any gun is Eve’s type.”

“Well, the date Igor is bringing to the party will be the real decider. He’s taking a machine gun I picked up at a bargain sale. An older model, but 7.62-millimeter shells at a good delivery rate will keep Hostile aliens away from the annoying cruise director and friends.”

As Suzanne had feared, Fermat II proved to be a forbidding, desolate lump of rock with a huge, deep gash along the equator. Rods brought The Max in and left her suspended, the engines ticking over, just above the surface and back from the northern edge of the gigantic rift valley. They took the shuttle through the thin winds that howled along the precipice top and over the chasm, to give Suzanne the first proper view of the valley that had swallowed her sister. Below them clouds drifted slowly along the valley, and below the clouds was a green valley floor cut by a single, wandering band of blue.

“Must be plant life,” said Rods, “terraforming has gone on apace since the last survey, and that must be a sizable river if we can see it at this distance.”

Suzanne pressed her face against the port side flight deck viewing screen of the shuttle as they descended hoping to see some sign of her sister. Instead, she noticed several giant cones rising at intervals from the valley floor.

“Are those hills natural? They look regular.”

“Dunno,” said Rods, “but there’s supposed to be a building somewhere. On a hill, close to the river. We’ll look for that first.” They cruised up the valley – in the same direction as the rotation, or East – for a time until the vegetation become distinctly sparser, revealing more of the valley’s dark, rocky floor and there were no more hills, so they turned back and dropped lower, following the river, which flowed west. The shuttle had telescopic lenses that could be set to scan, revealing a landscape of stunted trees and bushes growing out of a tortured landscape of rocks covered by green plants that Suzanne realized, with a start, must be a form of grass. There were groups of roaming brown dots which closer inspection showed were mini buffalos.

“Quite an eco-system,” muttered Rods, but otherwise neither human said much. To someone who had spent their life on earth, the landscape would seem monotonous and unappealing, but for the sheer size of it. The valley was wide enough for even the vast cliffs to seem distant and for the sun to shine on the river and much of its catchment. But to Rods and in particular Suzanne, who only knew earth through holograms, it was a magical place. The atmosphere on the surface was about the equivalent of three thousand meters above sea level on Earth meaning that they could breathe easily but should not do any violent activity until they had acclimatized. They both wanted to get out but finding the building that the Dawn Treader colonists had discovered came first.

They cruised on, drifting lower until Suzanne could see the mini buffalos drinking at the river with her own eyes. They came to a line of small, irregularly shaped hills, boulders heaped on each other with grass growing out of them at all angles and beyond that the ocean – on Earth it would have been called a large lake but to the two humans it was a huge, rolling ocean stretching across the valley and west as far as they could see.

“My stars!” exclaimed Suzanne. “We could go swimming! Would it have fish?”

“Swimming?” said Igor, who had been sitting in the passenger section for the trip but now came into the pilot’s cabin.

“You go in the water, Igor,” said Suzanne.

“Questions and recreation later Cruise,” said Rods. “That must be the building.”

Gazing at the water, Suzanne had not noticed the structure, which was a collection of loosely linked one and two story buildings built of bricks cut from the valley sub strata, so that it seemed to grow from the valley itself. Beside it was the missing supply pod from the Dawn Treader but no signs of any of the colonists.

They put down at what was meant to be the landing field, a flat, overgrown field just beside the structure, and stepped out. They had coats on with the hoods tied up over peaked caps and cream on their faces, as they knew ultraviolet radiation would be high, but Suzanne could still feel a slight breeze wafting up the valley, on her face.

“Oh my,” she said, realizing what she was feeling for the first time in her life, natural wind on her face. “Oh my! Oh MY!” She stood for a moment, enraptured. It was cold but crisp. Invigorating.

“Now this is the place where little Emily should grow up,” she said firmly, coming out of her rapture. “She should live in a house near the river and play here under the shade with her friends and have a fairy party for her birthday.”

“Fairy party?”

“I read about very young children having them on Earth, a long time ago. Some girl dresses up as a fairy with a wand.” She raised her hand as if it was holding a wand. Or they could have clowns come. I would have liked to have had a fairy party when I was a child.”

“Well at the moment before little Emily gets to her fairy party she’ll have to avoid being eaten.”

“Eaten? By what?”

“By that! See in the slight dip in the ground, about mid-distance in front of us before the tree line.”

Suzanne saw a wicked looking snout, just visible in the grass, and before she knew it Mr. Glock was in her hands, safety catch off.

“You and Mr. Glock are getting along better.”

“I could grow to like him,” said Suzanne.

Rods laughed. “Finger off the trigger, Cruise. Lay it alongside the pistol. I don’t want to shoot this guy unless I have to. It’s just doing its job - although that job includes trying to eat us.”

“Another creature. East. Short range,” said Igor, who had also been taking in the view, but for different reasons.

“Say, what?” Rods whirled, picked up a stone and threw it hard at a clump of long grass. Something shrieked and shot into view. It was another creature, like the one in front of them. It was lion-like but with a longer snout comparable to that of a lizard.

“A Zard lizard lion. A Lard! These are predators from the Zard home planet,” said Rods. The Lard hissed loudly at them, flicking a forked tongue. “These things wanted to ambush us. No wonder the Zards are so good at ambushing. Keep an eye on our other friend.”

Suzanne looked around to see that the other Lard had crept out of its hiding place and was edging towards them. She brought up her pistol and it stopped. Rods picked up another rock and threw it at the second Lard.

“G’on, get lost!” The Lard started when the rock hit it, hissed noisily and reluctantly circled away, glaring malevolently at them. “Typical predator behavior. Not sure what it’s up against, so it leaves. Now you get rid of yours.”

“Huh?”

“I got rid of mine. You get rid of yours. Throw something at it and shout insults.”

“I don’t know any insults,” said Suzanne, lowering her pistol. She and the first Lard eyed one another uncertainly.

“Sure you do. You and your sister must have fought when you were kids?”

“I suppose we did sometimes.” Suzanne picked up a stone, threw it and yelled: “Go away, Lard, I thoroughly disapprove of you!” More by accident than design the stone hit the Lard on one shoulder. It hissed and stalked off to join its colleague, and both creatures sauntered off into the forest of pocket sized trees. Just as they reached the tree line, the bigger of the two Lards snarled over its shoulder at the humans.

“There you go, it went away,” said Rods, holstering his own pistol “but it’s a shame.”

“Why is it a shame?”

“I think it’s a male-female hunting pair. Maybe they have hungry Lard cubs back in their den.”

“Oh!” Suzanne had not considered the animal’s point of view. “We could get them something.”

“Little Emily would make a nice snack.”

“They can’t have Emily! I was thinking of meat in The Max’s freezer.”

“Let’s not start feeding the animals, Cruise. They have what looks to be a whole food chain out there to snack on. This is a partial recreation of the Zard home planet it seems and a thriving one. Whoever put all this together really knew what they were doing.”

“But it’s Zard, not human, won’t the Zards still be around?”

“Maybe not Zards as such but I think the cone, the hill over yonder,” Rods pointed South to where one of the hills that were a regular feature of the valley, loomed over the structure, “may hold the intelligent creatures we’ve been warned about”. As Suzanne watched, three objects flew out of the top of the bare crown of the hill and circled towards them.

“Okay let’s move smartly to the structure,” said Rods, who had also noticed the moving specks.

“Are they birds?”

“Look too big.”

They jogged into what was obviously the building’s reception area. A big display window was still intact, there was a couch, paintings on the walls, and a desk. The furniture was tattered but otherwise they might have been in a reception room anywhere. Rods and Suzanne knelt behind the desk, Suzanne still clutching her Glock, the weight of which she now found to be reassuring. Then she remembered her sister would have been there.

“Eve!” she called.

“Cruise, quiet a moment, until we see what’s up with our new arrivals. If you have to look, look around the desk, don’t poke your head over it. Igor, back into that passage just behind that door. No action until I command.”

“No action, I am behind,” said Igor.

In the subsequent stillness, Suzanne heard rustling and scrapings outside. She peered around the side of the desk and glimpsed one of the creatures through the grimy display window. Reptilian wings folded back, the creature was a cross between pictures of gargoyles she had seen and of Earth monkeys, moving on bent legs and arms as monkeys do. She lost sight of it and then heard Chee! Chee! Perhaps the creatures were deciding what to do next. Looking around she realized there was a tablet on a shelf just under the desk. She transferred Mr. Glock to her left hand, took the table out and flicked it on. There was no security, somehow it still had power, and the last page accessed was still up.

The screen was headed:

“The Hermitage Safety Warnings”

“Hermitage?” thought Suzanne, and then remembered that the big sign in the reception area, above the desk behind which she now cowered said “The Hermitage”.

There was a list of dangers, including one which said “flying creatures”. She opened it.

“Flying creatures, akin to flying monkeys from the mound,” it read. “Hostile. Very dangerous. Do not approach. If you see them run for The Hermitage. Call for assistance. They can open doors. They will enter rooms.”

She tapped Rods on the shoulder with the screen. His eyes widened as he read it.

“They’re looking around the shuttle, I think,” he whispered. Suzanne could hear them calling. “And Max says she can see more creatures moving from the mound, not flying. It’s time to leave.”

“What about Eve?”

“Don’t seem to be anyone here, Cruise and we won’t help her by getting trapped in this place. We’ll come back at night and...”

They heard a “Chee! Chee!” And a breath of air as the doors opened. She could hear bare feet flapping on the carpet. Suzanne just had time to gab Mr. Glock in both hands when one of the gargoyles jumped on the desk above her, arms upraised, fangs bared. Suzanne pushed Mr. Glock in front of her, arms straight and steady as she could, as Rods had taught her, and let her finger slip onto the trigger. At the last moment, another fragment of Rods advice leapt into her mind about firing too high and she dropped her aim to the creature’s waist.

Blam! Blam!

The creature vanished. Another shot from Rods echoed in the room.

“Igor! Fire!”

A single burst of machine gun fire blew out the display window, deafening Suzanne, her ears already ringing from her own shots.

“Up Cruise,” he heard Rods say through the ringing in her ears. We’ve won this round.”

Suzanne got up. The gargoyle that had jumped onto the desk lay dead, one hole in the chest – she had been aiming lower- and another which had made a mess of its forehead. She thought the creatures looked more obscene dead than alive. Rods had disposed of his creature with a single shot and Igor had almost cut the third in two with one burst of his weapon.

“I always wanted to see the machine gun in action,” said Rods, gleefully. “Cruise, well done!”

“Huh!” said Suzanne, still in a daze.

“Well done!”

“Oh right, yes. Thank you,” she said without conviction.

“But you left one bit out.”

“Oh! What was that?”

“You should have said ‘take that’ or ‘eat this’, or ‘don’t snarl at me’ or whatever before you fired.”

“I wasn’t concerned with bandying words with the creature,” she said, “just killing it”. She put Mr. Glock back in her coat pocket, aware that her hand was shaking.

Rods was by then too busy peering out the reception area door to pay much attention to the response. “Two more of those creatures keeping their distance, wondering what’s happened to the advance party, and scouting for the party of creatures I can see coming down that mound.”

Suzanne could also see them through the hole where the display window had been, but at that distance they looked like dots.

“Time for us to go,” said Rods. “Igor! Quick, scan through the structure. Double time. You’re looking for any colonists, and grab another of the screens on the way through. We’ll see what Max can do with it.”

“Scan for colonists, Take screen. Return here.”

“No, come out the far end,” said Rods, pointing deep into the structure. “That’s the western end. We’ll pick you up in the shuttle. And keep in Comm.

“Exit western end, keep in comm.”

“Good robot. Now go.”

They made it back to the shuttle without incident, Suzanne took Mr. Glock out again and kept him ready, one eye on the flying dots she could see to their North, until they got inside. Rods shifted the craft to the far end of the structure. Igor emerged carrying a screen but without having found anyone. They were just about to lift off again, the two remaining flying creatures obviously keeping an eye on them, when Suzanne spotted movement at the edge of a forest of stunted trees. It was a colonist – a bearded man, stumbling, dragging one leg and waving frantically. Suzanne got up to help him, but Rods restrained her.

“We’ll send Igor and move the shuttle to him. We need to be fast now. I think our friends from the mound, whatever they are, are almost on the other side of the structure. See our flying friends?”

Suzanne looked up. The flying creatures – there were now five of them – were almost directly above them. Igor jumped out othe port hatch on Rods’ orders while the trader let the shuttle drift towards the forest. Igor had picked up the colonist and was jogging back when Suzanne first saw the walking creatures. They were quite different from the flyers, and something like Zards she thought – lizard creatures – but the features were much coarser and bodies heavier. The Zards she had seen in pictures were slim and graceful. To her astonishment, the newcomers were carrying large shields and spears.

“Those aren’t Zards,” she said.

“No – Igor, get moving! – they’re early Zards, like Neanderthals are to us, a branch of the Zard family evolutionary tree that didn’t work out.”

“But what are they doing here? The Zard home planet is on the other side of Earth, and aren’t they supposed to be extinct? And aren’t they going to charge the shuttle?”

About 10 of the proto-Zards had formed up and brought their spears down.

“All very good points cruise…” Igor staggered in through the side hatch with the colonist and Rods lifted off with the creatures a few paces away. Suzanne could hear a deep-throated roar. “But we’ll save the big picture questions until we’ve spoken to our new friend and looked at the stuff on the screens we took. Just as well they didn’t throw those stickers they’ve got. Might have done some damage.”

They did a slow circuit of the building at a safe distance. There were perhaps 50 of the proto-Zards all starting malignantly at the craft, shaking their spears. They appeared to be yelling. The flying creatures kept their distance from a craft that was many times larger than they were.

“Can you shoot at them?” asked Suzanne.

Rods smiled.

“You’re enthusiastic. The shuttle is a civilian craft. It isn’t armed. We’ll bug out and let them think they’ve chased us away. We have some research to do.”