Silverfleet and Claypool

Ten fighters slowed from lightspeed into a new system. There was a red giant, and around it turned five planets. Two were tiny rocky spheres hurtling close to their doom at the bloated waist of the star; two were great cold gas planets with rings and dozens of icy moons; between the hot inner duo and the cold outer pair, a single terrestrial orb circled. An atmosphere surrounded it, registering oxygen, nitrogen and water vapor as well as a rather large proportion of trace gases. By the time the ten had coasted in past the outermost of the giants, they picked up diffuse signs of life from Planet Three. It was not anyone’s idea of a jungle paradise, though: its terrain varied from yellow desert to grey plateau to red mountains with nary a lake or a river.

“That’s it,” said Cloutier, as the ten fighters decelerated along parallel paths, a few kilometers apart, traveling at 60,000 kilometers per second. “Home away from home. We found it about six months ago, me and Stelling. We never told Sandra about it. Secrets are nice.”

“And she still doesn’t know?” asked Silverfleet skeptically.

“I wouldn’t go that far. She pretends not to know, anyway. Hey, it’s not like it’s anything precious—for water we have a swamp, for air we have 10% oxygen and 8% helium, neon and argon, and for entertainment we have—alcohol and cannabis, actually. We didn’t do a thorough mineral survey, but we doubt it has much from our surface scans.”

“I’d agree,” said Silverfleet. Her sensors picked up plenty of minerals—silicon in the sand, iron in the rocks, and nickel, zinc, magnesium, aluminum and compounds of sodium and sulphur scattered about. There was nothing anyone would pay to have hauled several jumps in a freighter. There was no sign of volcanism—this was an old planet, a bit below average in size, and its plate tectonics, if there had ever been any, had become gridlocked.

“I definitely saw it this time,” said Jana Crown.

“What?” asked Silverfleet.

“It was—it was like—”

“It looked like a light pattern,” put in Cloutier. “Definitely clearer than before. Just as we were crossing about 35% of lightspeed. Maybe it’s some effect you get when you’re this far out. It was right in that window in the galaxy, I mean, that open area.”

“Where there aren’t any stars,” Claypool agreed. “Against those background galaxies.”

“Maybe,” said Silverfleet, “it’s some regular phenomenon out here on the fringe, and the reason no one’s noticed it before is that normally it’s blotted out by the stars. But in that window, as you call it, there aren’t any stars.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Myrrh Melville offered. “But this old fighter’s sensors aren’t what they used to be. You could say the same of the pilot.”

“I saw it, I think,” said Meena Melville.

“I did too,” said Stacy Mackenzie. “And if you’ll pardon me, Commander, it can’t be what you said, because I’ve never seen it before and I’ve flown a lot out here.”

“You’re right, of course,” replied Silverfleet. “We saw that, um, light pattern way back at Marelon. Or Black Rock. I don’t remember. It was very faint. I’m sure it’s gotten clearer. In Dr. Frederik’s data, there’s some sort of emanation from one of the nearby galaxies, but it couldn’t be an actual object, it’s too far. So maybe that’s what this is—some sort of visual emanation. Well, it gives us something to talk about.”

They coasted along in silence for twenty seconds, and Cloutier replied, “Except that no one knows what to say about it.”

They coasted for another twenty seconds, and Claypool said, “Anyone for a game of chess?”

They floated into the atmosphere of the third planet and Cloutier and Myrrh took the lead. They dropped toward the northern hemisphere of the planet, their shells brushing aside the thin air. There was a flat space of rock before a cliff, the worn-down leftover of a meteor crater, and in the cliff a pattern of cracks that widened to caves at the bottom. The ten fighters landed in the flat space and the hatches popped open and they all stood, looking up at the cliff, out at the horizon, around at each other and down at the bits of grass and moss pushing up among the rocks.

“Plant life,” said Silverfleet. “Intro plant life.”

“I know,” replied Cloutier. “There was a colony here, sort of. It didn’t get very far.”

“Maybe in another hundred years,” said Silverfleet, “there’ll be a bit of actual soil and someone can actually raise crops. What’s that—smell?”

“I don’t know. Moss, mold, a bit of exhalation of the planet.”

“No, the planet’s tectonically dead. There wouldn’t be thermal vents. Well, the atmosphere is surprisingly good, considering. It’s not often you get out of your ship and pop your helmet on the surface of a planet, at least out here on the fringe. They terraformed Marelon and Talis and pretty much everywhere else, but if this is terraforming, I’m never hiring that contractor.”

“What about Colfax?” asked Claypool.

“Maybe they terraformed Colfax too. I wonder. Maybe they just dropped seeds. I suppose they must’ve done something. The founders of Colfax had a lot more technology than the current residents do.”

“That wouldn’t be hard,” said Cloutier. “Through here.”

They followed her into a crack, turning on the lights on their helmets as it wound back into the cliff. It was wide enough for single file, usually without shoulders brushing the wall. After twenty meters they came to a chamber, the first of many, where the rock had shattered and had been washed out. The floor was rock and gravel and sand, and the ceiling was just the walls drawn together to a point. But it was not just a cave, it was a room, and there was a bit of furniture—a table of carved rock, a few chairs of stone, a shelf with a stack of replicated dishes.

“This is home?” asked Claypool.

“Our little refuge,” replied Cloutier. “You have to admit, it’s better than the planetoids.”

“I’ll go that far,” said Elan Klee, “but you have to consider the type of accommodations we saw at the planetoids.”

“It wasn’t my idea. None of the accommodations there are what you’d call comfy. Through here. Hey, Stelling!” she called.

“Stelling’s here?” asked Claypool. “Your comrade?”

“We found this place together,” Cloutier explained. “But she and Bell are the ones who spend most of their time here. Stelling hates Sandra, and Bell hates the Planetoids.”

“My type of woman,” said Klee, “both of them.”

“Hey Stelling!” yelled Myrrh. “She’s probably out tending the garden.”

“You have a garden?” asked Conna.

“Oh, yeah. I’ll show you later. Come on in.” They followed Myrrh and Cloutier through another crack and almost immediately came to another room, a smaller one. Several more rooms opened off this one, which was lit by a lamp run on a solar battery. There were more chairs and a table, on which there lay a variety of utensils and a tray scattered with dried herbal buds. “Well,” said Myrrh, “they left us something to smoke. Hey, Mona, we’re going to light it without you!”

“You guys smoke?” asked Cloutier.

“What? It’s cannabis?” asked Silverfleet. “Uh, no, not really. Go right ahead.”

“We will,” said Myrrh, stuffing a wad of the herb into a pipe and lighting it with a mini-torch. “Cloot,” she gasped, “take it.”

Claypool and Silverfleet looked at each other as the pipe was passed around. Half the party decided to partake: Conna but not Elan, Stacy and Vya but not Claypool or Silverfleet, Myrrh but not her daughter Meena, Cloutier but not Jana Crown. Claypool and Crown peeked back into the other rooms while a fragrant smoke filled the crowded little chamber behind them. Silverfleet stood in the middle of it, letting the pipe go around her and watching the standing smoke slowly wave and flow in the golden light.

“There’s someone in here,” said Claypool from the inner room.

“What? What?”

“Oh, that’s probably Stelling,” replied Myrrh, standing up. “She’s crashed out. Should we let her sleep?”

“No, wake her up,” said Cloutier. “Why does she get to sleep? The party’s here. Besides, we need her for Silverfleet’s, um, fleet, right? Is that pipe out?”

“I think there’s some left,” said Stacy, “but it needs a light. It’s a pretty big bowl.”

“Stuff’s decent,” said Vya.

“We used to smoke this grass we grew back on Marelon,” Conna recalled. “It was all over the place around our farm. It wasn’t as good as this, though. We weren’t supposed to smoke it, so of course we did. This is so much better—where do you grow it? Right here on the planet? Um, Yellow Roost?”

“Hey, Stelling,” said Cloutier, bringing the pipe into the next room and turning on the light. Stelling lay sleeping on a cot, a sheet half covering her muscular body, her brown hair hanging almost to the floor from half a meter up. “We’re home, dearie, wake up.” Cloutier sat on the cot and relit the pipe, then blew smoke in Stelling’s face.

“She’s not moving,” said Claypool. “Something’s wrong with her.”

“She’s breathing. She’s just tired. Wake up, Mona. Hey, Stelling, wake up!”

“Something is wrong with her,” Myrrh suggested.

“Bull. Wake up, Mona darling.” They poked and prodded the sleeping Mona Stelling, but she slept on. “Hmm. There’s something wrong with her.”

“Let me,” said Conna. “I was a nurse in one of my lives.” She took Cloutier’s place on the cot’s edge. “Hmm. Breathing’s normal. She’s just unconscious. Hmm. No trauma. Hey, maybe she’s just really tired.”

“We should leave her alone,” said Cloutier.

“You’re sure she’s okay?” asked Silverfleet.

“Yeah,” replied Conna doubtfully. “Well, let’s leave her alone. I could go get the kit from my fighter, check her out—I mean, more than just heartbeat and breathing. Those are normal.” She stood up. “I don’t know. I think she’s okay. Let’s leave her alone.” They drifted back to the room with the table and lamp. Conna, with one last doubtful look at the sleeper, turned out the light.

“Well, where’s the other one?” asked Silverfleet, thinking to herself, pirates, this is what it’s like to hang out with pirates. “Bell?”

“Kristin,” said Myrrh. “She doesn’t like dark small places. She’s probably out walking. She goes for walks a lot around here. Tending the crop.”

“I don’t blame her,” said Elan. “I don’t mind the fighter, it’s small but it’s out in space. This is a bit closed-in for me. Shall we go back outside?”

“Sure,” said Myrrh. “Let’s get the replicators going and have a picnic.”

They went outside into the light of the red giant, and in a few minutes the ten women were sitting around eating whatever each had induced her replicator into producing. The pirates refilled their pipe and passed it around until it was gone, then repeated the process several times. Silverfleet, Claypool and Cloutier sat together outside the circle.

“I’m amazed,” Silverfleet said to Cloutier. “I knew you had a lot of stamina, but the sheer amount of smoke you manage to hold in is incredible. I compliment you on your training.”

“You should try some. It’s good stuff.”

“Oh, no,” replied Silverfleet. “My drug of choice is whisky. So tell me about this planet.”

“Oh, let’s see. Four little moons—”

“I saw them on the way in. I bet they were once one moon, and a collision broke it up.”

“Something like that,” said Cloutier. “You can sometimes see them from down here. They have weird orbits—one goes fast this way, another the other way, and the other two—let’s see, I think one goes up over the poles and the fourth is just really elliptical. Um, let’s see. The day’s about a hundred and forty hours. It’s noon now, so it’ll be dusk in about a day and a half. Um, there’s some water, not too much, all ground water.”

“I wondered if it was all desert.”

“There are swampy areas. We’re on the edge of a big crater. Maybe the thing that broke up the moon, like you say, maybe it bounced off and hit here. You can see the central peak over there—it’s, oh, twenty kilometers.”

“Oh, yes. The air’s quite clear.”

“Hardly any vapor in the atmosphere. Oh, and no pollution, of course, except for what we put out.” Vya de Har turned to hand Cloutier the pipe. The old pirate took a long hit, passed the pipe to Myrrh and released her breath with almost no visible smoke. “Mmm, tastes good. Flower tops. Plenty to go around. Sure—?”

“I’m sure,” said Silverfleet. “I mean—that couldn’t account for—?”

“Excessive sleeping,” said Claypool. “I was wondering that myself.”

“Stelling? Hey, this stuff’s exactly what they grow in hydroponics at the planetoids.”

“I think the strain’s from Talis,” put in Vya de Har. “She’s just tired.” They stared off into space for a minute. “We grow this in the swamp,” she added. “Its biochemistry is identical to its parent stock.”

“We had to bore a well, but the water’s pure,” said Cloutier. “Old Yellow Roost may seem kind of barren, but it’s really a nice planet at heart.”

“You said something about a dead colony. Any ruins?”

“Oh. Yeah. Two sets, in fact. There’s a colony that never got going, in the big swamp belt near the south pole. Right near it there’s some sort of explorer cruiser. Bell said she didn’t think it belonged to the colony, maybe it came to get them or something, but it’s just sitting there on this mountain.”

“No sign of people?”

“Nope. There are a few graves at the colony, but they were all from when they’d just landed. 28 something. Five hundred years is plenty to grind up any remains of people. We’re probably breathing in their dust.”

“Don’t let it get to you,” said Silverfleet. “Think how much more true that is at Central.”

“Or Siri,” said Vya de Har. “Where my family came from. We had a billion people after five hundred years of colonization. But it was a perfect place for settlement—there was water, air, oxygen in almost the same amounts as Central—we even had our own homegrown bacteria and algae, at least that was more or less what they were. They introduced plants, then animals, and by the time I came along it was a regular farm planet.”

“So did the bacteria or whatever cause any problems?”

“Oh, no. It wasn’t enough like us to be able to prey on us. Of course our organisms crowded the old ones out to a great extent, but they’re still around. The algae’s sort of purple-pink.”

“Arturo’s just a bunch of mined-out tunnels,” said Cloutier. “I’d chew off my arm rather than go back.”

“Bela-4 was totally sterile when humans arrived,” said Silverfleet. “We remade the planet completely. All you could see of the old rocky hulk was cliff faces and craters and sand.”

“At least you had a surface,” replied Cloutier. “Even if everything was artificial. But this, this is natural. This is what a planet should be.” She lay back and gazed up at the sky, a smile on her face. Silverfleet looked at her, then looked out at the horizon, yellow and drab and cluttered with debris.

The picnic turned into a party, and everyone, even the Great Silverfleet, got quite loaded on one thing or another, and presently most of them nodded off—Silverfleet and Claypool and Klee lying in the short grasses below the cliff, most of the rest in cots in the cave. A tiny bit of weather came up as the red sun declined—a fresh wind picked up some dust, and then a bit of moisture rose from the deepest part of the crater, and when Silverfleet woke up there was a sprinkling shower. It was the closest thing Yellow Roost had to a rain storm. Silverfleet had a headache, which felt worse when she remembered how much she had drunk.

“Oh, Suz,” she groaned, sitting up and stretching. She was nude, her vac suit nearby, tangled with Claypool’s. She felt deeply lethargic. She thought of the sheer distance they had come in the past five months, of the dark desperate flights and the sudden fights and the worry and the pressure and the fog that seemed to have surrounded them as soon as they left Talis. She stood up and closed her eyes as the mist drizzled on her. No wonder she was tired. She had been driven, driven by history and hope and the untold needs of Suz Claypool. Now she could think of no better way to spend a month or two than here on this remote and insignificant planet.

She heard the slight creak and rustle of Claypool sitting up. “Halyn,” she heard her say. “You know what?”

“We have to go further?”

“Well, Central will be at the Adamantine Planetoids. That’s just a short jump from here. Even if Sandra didn’t know we came here, and I bet she does, they’d be sure to check this system. And we have no idea when they were going to get to the Planetoids, except it was going to be soon. We may only have a few days’ leeway.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.” Silverfleet thought of their month-long respite at Black Rock, then their extra day at the blue star when they knew they had at least a week lead. Now they were forty light years past Black Rock at the edge of the galactic arm. How could Central have caught up? Why would they even bother? Claypool didn’t argue. They lay back down for a few minutes, and the mist lifted and the afternoon sun boiled away the moisture on their naked bodies. Silverfleet woke again from her half-slumber and with an effort sat up. “Hey, Suz,” she said, “let’s go for a fly.”

“Oh. Oh, I don’t feel like getting back into my suit just yet.”

“Just put your helmet on. Never flown au naturel before?” Claypool lay still, expressionless, her arm shielding her eyes from the sun. “Oh, come on. You were just on about—”

Claypool rocked back and stood up. “Okay, let’s go,” she said irritably.

“That’s better. Help me up. I’m not used to this gravity thing, and you obviously are.”

They picked up their vac suits and walked back up to the space before the cliff. Puffs of smoke were seeping from the cave. Jana Crown sat on the front of her fighter, her vac suit left somewhere.

“Hey,” she said lazily, “what’s up?”

“You been smoking that stuff?” asked Silverfleet.

“No,” said Crown, with a brief glare in the direction of the caves. “It makes me nauseous.”

“We’re going skinny-flying,” said Claypool. “Want to come?”

Crown looked around, as if better offers might be coming in. There were none. She stood up. “Okay, where to? And how do we read our head-up displays?”

“You wear the helmet, silly. Halyn will show you.”

“Sure,” said Silverfleet. “We used to do this at the academy. My whole wing flew nude in the New Year’s parade once, and no one ever knew. It was before the White Hand, need I say.” She detached her helmet from the rest of the suit and pulled it over her dark hair, which had grown to shoulder length since the last time she’d had the chance to cut it at Three Star. She turned to look at them and they couldn’t hide a snicker. She did a full turn and curtseyed.

“It’s you,” Claypool commented. She pulled her own helmet on. “Do I look just as good?”

“You both look fine, let’s go for a fly.”

“Where to, I think someone wanted to know?”

“Oh. Well, how about the old colony? Del says it’s near the south pole.”

“Old colony?” Crown repeated. “There was a colony?”

“So I’m led to believe. And something about a cruiser. Sounds very intriguing.”

They got up off the ground and headed south across dry uplands. Soon the planet’s equatorial belt, a ring of worn-out mountains baking in the sun’s heat, had vanished behind them, and a few minutes later the three fighters were zooming low over the south polar swamps. The flat expanse was almost green and was interrupted only by a lone holdout of the highlands, a long ridge that came to an abrupt end a kilometer above the marshes. At the bitter end of the ridge, a few meters from the brink of the cliff, sat a space ship about the size and shape of a portable classroom. The fighters landed on the ridge beside it, got out and pulled off their helmets.

“Wow, what a rush,” said Jana Crown.

“It took me half the trip to get used to using my bare feet to fly,” said Claypool.

Silverfleet, her headache vanished in the exhilaration of flying, walked up to the ship. She had a spring in her step, all of a sudden, as if she’d just woken up. “It’s a CPXX, I think. A cruiser probe. It’s got to be a hundred years old at least.”

“It looks brand new,” said Claypool.

“Let’s look inside.” Silverfleet put her hand on the pad by the hatch, and it zipped open.

“How did you do that?” asked Claypool. “You’re just going to go in? Hey, Halyn, wait, there might be people in there—!”

“I doubt it,” said Silverfleet, as the other two trailed her down a narrow corridor. “I mean, what have they been doing all this time since the pirates came here? Hiding inside playing euchre?” She put her hand on the pad by the hatch at the end of the corridor, and it flew open. “Ah. The bridge. Now if they left their computer unlocked like they left the hatches—”

They each took a seat in the bridge, which was built to hold exactly four crew. There was no dust, no mildewy odor—the ship’s inside had the faint and pure scent of a box sealed for centuries.

Silverfleet sat at the science officer’s post. “Hmm. I see. Well, I can at least read off what they were last scanning for. Did you know there was life on this planet? High temps at the poles 305 K, lows 273. At the poles it freezes occasionally. At the equator it can get up to 350. No need to sanitize your dishes—just leave them at the equator for a few minutes.”

“So is all the life introduced? Such as there is?”

“I guess the colonists brought the grasses and stuff, but there was already a flora here—mosses and molds and lichens. Not much fauna, just what insects and small birds and mammals the colonists happened to bring.”

“Small birds and mammals?” Claypool repeated. “Really? I haven’t seen or heard anything like that. Maybe they all died out.”

“They must have. I can’t see how to get it to scan for life signs now, but when they arrived, the four people in the crew were the only living thing bigger than a sparrow. Can you get anything?”

“This is the pilot’s seat,” said Claypool. “But unlike you, I never flew a real starship. How about you, Jana?”

“This is the engineer’s chair,” Crown replied. “Um, it looks like the engines are fine.”

“Really? Fully charged? After how long they’ve been sitting here?”

“I think so. Let’s see, that readout’s—sure, I think so. Solar batteries charged. All read ready.”

“Sure,” said Silverfleet. “These things are built to last. You could leave and come back a thousand years later, and as long as no one steals it and meteors don’t hit it, you can hop in and fly. The only mystery is what became of the crew—the ship seems completely undamaged. Um, let’s see—17/9/3083. Yes. Last scan time. They did this life scan as of 17/9/3083. How do you like that? Almost three hundred years ago.”

“Two hundred and seventy years,” said Claypool. “Two hundred and seventy-two years since someone sat in this chair.”

“Probably some buttoned-down explorer pilot. What would she think, to know some naked chick’s sitting in her spot?”

“Hey!”

“Well, true or not?” Silverfleet rose. “Well,” she said, “if we don’t plan on flying this thing, and it’s not that I’m not tempted, maybe we should go check out the colony.”

“We could fly this thing?” asked Crown.

“What sort of weapons do you think it has?” asked Claypool.

“Typical Suzane,” replied Silverfleet. “Probably not much. Maybe we’ll come back and see if we can figure it out. Maybe we can use it in this revolution you’re working on.”

They walked out, a spring in their steps, got into their fighters and flew down to the swamp. On a patch of slightly higher ground they found what was left of the colony. It had never been more than a few dozen buildings, and the local flora was steadily reducing those to their mineral components. There was in fact a lively population of sparrows, but no colonists, no bones of colonists, no shell holes or photon artillery scars, and exactly three graves, a little way away from the ruins. A little way from the graves were the remains of a freighter, broken up in a crash.

“28/5/2894,” Claypool read from one of the gravestones. “The other two have the same date of death. A ten-year-old and two adults.”

“Died in the crash, I guess,” said Silverfleet. “There were more than three people here. I bet there were more ships than this old freighter. Did they stop marking graves after the first three?”

“Maybe they all starved to death,” Crown offered. “If they were desperate they might not have bothered to make gravestones. They could’ve eaten each other.”

“They didn’t do well, that’s clear. But they built those buildings—this wasn’t just a crash landing. They meant to colonize the place. I still don’t get it.”

“Me either,” said Crown. “Talis had a failed first colony—it was another century before people came back there. That first settlement only lasted a few years, but they left dozens of graves. And piles of toxic garbage.”

“I’ve seen lots of lost colonies,” said Claypool. “There’s always a cemetery full of stories.”

“Maybe it was a plague,” Crown offered.

“Scary,” Claypool replied. “Maybe it’s something here on the planet.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” said Silverfleet. “I mean, what would it be? Anthrax? That bioscan didn’t show anything like that, and it would have picked up any organism even remotely related to known agents. What else? Something totally unknown? But exo-organisms are typically different enough from us that they can’t hurt us.”

“It gives me the creeps,” said Claypool.

“Let’s go back and have another look at that ship,” suggested Silverfleet. “Maybe if we ask nicely it’ll tell us what we want to know.”

The three naked pilots returned to the ridge and the cruiser probe. Its computer was running, its solar collectors were operating efficiently, and its energy reserves were at maximum, and Silverfleet even managed to get it to do a new scan—there were no mice now, only sparrows and bugs and spiders, but the introduced grasses and mosses had spread over 20% of the planet, mostly around the south pole but also in a patch around a crater in the north. The crater showed signs of technology, to wit, nine G220 fighters and a similar number of diminutive female humans in and out of vac suits.

“Interesting,” Silverfleet summarized, “but nothing we didn’t already know. Shall we go hop in our fighters and head back?”

“This exploration is very tiring,” Claypool replied, standing up and stretching languidly. “Can’t we linger a little?”

“Sure,” Silverfleet replied. “Jana, you tired?”

“I could use a nap.”

“Lying down in the grass,” said Claypool. “I haven’t done that since Marelon.”

Outside, the sun was shining down with midmorning intensity—the ridge’s longitude was around the planet a little way from that of the caves up north. They found a spot in the shade of a tall rock and soon, throwing themselves down in some grasses and mosses, they were snoozing.

Silverfleet woke up an hour later, the sun in her eyes. She rolled this way and it was still nagging at her, the other way and there was a rock. Finally she sat up. The other two women were dozing. She lay back in the short grass, but the rock seemed to have moved right under her. After a minute hoping it would move on its own, she sat up again, then stood.

“Come on,” she said, poking Claypool in the side with her toe. “Let’s go back.”

“Hm? What?” Claypool opened her eyes a crack, then closed them. “Lemme sleep a little longer. Been so long since I had a good nap.”

“Come on, it’s all we’ve done since we got here.”

“What do you mean? We checked out that colony.”

“Have the bad dreams gone away?”

Claypool’s eyes opened. She sat up. “Oh,” she said, “let’s not talk about my dreams.”

“I’ll take that as a no. Come on, we can catch up on our many hours of lost sleep just as well back at the crater as down here. They may be worrying about us.”

They got up, and with some effort got Crown to get up, and soon the three were speeding back to the north. The equatorial mountains passed beneath them, a couple of ragged moons over their heads, and then they were diving back into the atmosphere toward a big circle drawn in rock on the yellow desert: the crater where the pirates had their home away from home.

“Hey, look,” said Claypool, “that big green patch. They have a forest here?”

“I think that’s their, um, weed patch,” Crown explained.

“Well, let’s go look,” said Silverfleet. “We’re sightseeing. It’s a sight.”

So they dropped to the crater floor and skimmed five meters over the sand and low grasses and a minute later they were climbing out of their fighters again, their bare feet sinking a centimeter or two into thin mud. Before them stood the cannabis plants, in full and glorious flower and three meters high, around them festered a field of muck, and behind them the central peak of the crater rose like the pointer of a vast sundial fifteen kilometers away. Its shadow marked tea-time.

“I never got into this stuff,” said Silverfleet, walking up a path into the grove, “though everyone on Bela smoked it as a teenager. But you have to be impressed with the sheer size of these plants. Oh, I see corn over there—so they don’t just grow weed.”

“I think I saw some beans, too,” said Claypool. “Well, I’m impressed.”

“They have a whole bunch of vegetables,” said Crown. “We, uh, hit a freighter full of ag supplies back at Talis.”

“Pirate farmers,” said Claypool. “Who’d’ve thought it?”

“Not me,” Crown admitted. “But, you know, you gotta eat something when you’re on planet.”

They drew up behind Silverfleet, who was standing in the path, dwarfed by the plants. They leaned around her to see what she was looking at. A woman with light brown hair, in vac suit without helmet, slept on the ground, a smile on her face. “I take it,” said Silverfleet, “this is Kristin Bell?”

When the three nude pilots climbed out of their fighters before the cliff, Cloutier, Stacy, Meena, Vya and Klee were sitting around in the shadow of the cliff smoking.

“We have to get out of here,” Silverfleet announced.

“What?” Cloutier replied. “Halyn, we can’t get Stelling to wake up. She’s sick or something. You know any medicine?”

“Just enough. We have to leave. Leave the planet.”

“What? Where’d you go? What did you find?”

“We found Bell,” said Jana Crown. “She’s sound asleep in the weed patch.”

“Oh no,” said Stacy. “Oh no. It’s the weed, isn’t it? Oh no. Maybe something in the groundwater. I swear, we had no idea. I thought it was just really good stuff.”

“You can just stop smoking,” said Meena.

“No, it’s not the weed,” Silverfleet replied. “It’s nothing to do with the weed. We have to get off the planet.”

“What? Why?” asked Cloutier.

“I’m not exactly sure, but we have to go, now. Where are the others?”

“Sleeping, why?”

“Great. Go wake them up. If you can. We’re leaving now.”

“Where do we go?” asked Vya.

“Halyn,” said Claypool, “what will we do with Bell and Stelling? They won’t wake up and we can’t fit them in our fighters. What do we do, tow them?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” She looked around. “Well? Isn’t anyone going to go try and wake Myrrh and Conna?”

“I’ll wake them,” said Meena.

“I’ll help,” said Elan Klee. “I think I know how to wake Conna. I’ll tell her the baby needs changing. You get your mom. But what about Stelling, anyway?”

“You guys worry about waking the sleepers. If you can’t wake them, carry them out here. Can you go get Bell, too? She’s in the weed patch.”

“If the weed’s okay,” Cloutier asked, “can we—?”

“It’s fine. I’m sure. Pick all you want—but be ready when we come back. Claypool, we need to go get that ship.”

“What? The cruiser probe?”

“Are you nuts?” asked Cloutier. “It’s been abandoned for hundreds of years.”

“272, to be exact. No, I’m not especially nuts. Suz?”

“Um, all systems go, I guess,” said Claypool from the engineer’s chair. “Life support—go. Oh, better turn off outside air, huh?”

“That’d be wise,” replied Silverfleet from the pilot seat, “since we’re going out of the atmosphere. Ah. Checklist. Let’s see. Oh, man, I’m tired. I could lie down and sleep for—okay. Let’s see. There.” The ship’s computer ran through a hundred checks in about a nanosecond. “Okay. Now let’s find hover.”

“These things hover?”

“Boy,” Silverfleet replied, “you fighter pilots really don’t know anything about real starships. In principle, it’s just like a fighter, only bigger. Ah, there. Yes.” There was a slight shake, then the planet loosed its hold on the ship. “Now. Up. Yes. Ten meters, twenty, thirty. You’re sure we have life support, by the way?”

“I think so.”

“Suz!”

“Yes. Yes, we have life support.”

“Click on it,” said Silverfleet. “Turn up the air exchanger.”

“It’s working at normal capacity,” Claypool replied. “Do we really need to waste energy on maximum?”

“Yes! It’s not much energy. We can restore before we pull out of the system. Look. Remember, when we got out of our fighters, we were wide awake, weren’t we? When we got out by the cliff and they were all sitting around looking logy, we had a spring in our step. Just now, after we did outside checks and hammered on that damn stubborn clamp for ten minutes, we were both worn out. No, not worn out—sleepy. Now I’m waking up again.” She looked at her controls. “Not that I’m paying full attention—we’ve just hovered up to five hundred meters. I guess it’s time to try thrust.” She hit some spots on the panel, and the ship shook. “Hmm. Not that. Let’s see.” She tried some more, then another, then tried it all again. Suddenly the right sequence occurred to her and the ship shot forward. “She’s got some juice, doesn’t she?”

“Can you land her?”

“I’m not super confident, no. That’s why I wanted them to get Bell. One landing’s plenty, no need to make two. Each time we try it, I have a certain probability of demolishing our only hope of saving the sleeping beauties.”

They spent the next twenty minutes finding their way into various control systems, giving themselves system identifications and decrypting the ship’s log, which ended with less than a whimper—the last entry, two weeks after the landing, was a summary of temperature and moisture patterns over a ten kilometer circle around the already-deceased colony.

“They had no idea they were in danger,” Silverfleet summarized. “The only hint I see is that the captain had adjusted their duty times downward—they were tired. I imagine they thought it was just stress. And then he scheduled an all-crew hike. Who knows where they took their terminal nap? I don’t care to look for their bones.”

“We’re almost there,” said Claypool. “Crater coming up below.”

“Okay, let’s find out how much I remember from freighter lessons.”

The landing was fine, but the scene in front of the caves wasn’t. Seven fighter pilots stood around looking upset and sleepy at once, and three more lay peacefully dozing on the ground at their feet.

“Halyn,” said Elan Klee, “we can’t wake Conna either.”

“And it was a close thing with Myrrh,” said Cloutier.

“I can imagine. Put their fighters in the freight, and put them in the bridge. They can be our gunners. I sure hope we don’t need gunners.”

An hour later they were lifting off, Silverfleet in the cruiser’s pilot seat, Claypool at engineer, and the still-dozing Mona Stelling and Kristin Bell in the other two seats. Their four fighters were in the cruiser’s cargo hold. Conna Marais’s fighter was with in the tiny fighter bay, with Conna packed inside.

Twelve hours later the cruiser probe and the seven free-flying fighters were clamped to a rocky and slightly oblong moon around the blue giant that was Yellow Roost’s fourth planet. The twelve women were lying on their backs in their vac suits in a rocky depression.

“I was so stoned,” said Kristin Bell. “I remember I was checking out the flowers. I was so sleepy. I’d been really sleepy for days.”

“Yeah,” Stelling agreed. “I was trying to do some chores, but the bed felt so good.”

“It’s the local flora,” Silverfleet explained. “I figured it out from the CPXX’s scans. One of the molds. It’s not its fault. It just happens to put out a chemical with its spores that puts mammals to sleep.”

“So that’s why the birds were still there,” Crown put in.

“Then why didn’t we all just fall asleep?” asked Cloutier.

“It’s slow,” Silverfleet went on. “And before, you guys probably never stayed more than a few days. How long had you two been on the ground?”

“Let’s see,” said Stelling, furrowing her brow. She was even smaller than Silverfleet, with a dark complexion and brown eyes and a sweet smile showing through her visor. “It’s what, 24/10?”

“We left the planet 23/10,” said Silverfleet.

“Remember what date we landed, Kris?”

“I think it was something-9. 20/9, I guess. I have no idea when I fell asleep.”

“But it took a month or so,” said Silverfleet. “That’s what happened to the colony, Jana. They fell asleep. That’s why no one was buried.”

“And the crew of the cruiser?” asked Claypool.

“Same thing. They lingered too long. They didn’t read the small print of their own scans.”

“I remember I had to turn the vents back from outside air to inside,” said Claypool. “They must’ve been conserving. You get sick of synthesized air. It would have saved them.”

“So how did they all die?” asked Cloutier. “The sparrows ate them?”

“That’s a fun image. No,” explained Silverfleet, “I’d guess they starved. Slowly, since they were asleep, but they starved. Same with the mice. Then the molds and the mosses and, yeah, the sparrows took care of the evidence.”

“I must be weak,” said Conna Marais. “I’d already succumbed. Well, Halyn, once again you saved my life.”

“When did I save your life before?”

“You got us out of Sandra’s jail.”

“And brought you straight to Yellow Roost.”

“Yellow Roost,” said Cloutier. “What a great planet. It really was. Now the sparrows can have it to themselves. Well, we have one keepsake. If only we could work out a way to pass the pipe out here in the vacuum.”

“We’ll have to find someplace that has air,” said Myrrh. “Anything on the cruiser probe’s computer?”

“I’ve been looking at their log,” Claypool replied, “and though this is as far as they’d gotten into the fringe, they were looking at a couple more planets with air and water. The last two, if you will. There’s this one here,” and she pointed a vac-suited finger at a bright star over her shoulder, “and then one just beyond it, that one, I think, and then the big empty.”

“Well, then,” said Elan Klee, getting up and pointing into the sky, “let’s go there.”