Unbounded

Chapter Seven: Teal Grip

  Mission Time: +445.2 Earth-years

  Tai walked purposefully along the circumferential corridor. His head was tilted slightly forward, his arms and legs tense as they swung. Ihaia walked close behind. After passing into Stasis Sector, Tekoha and Ariki marched down into view from the opposite direction, and the four of them converged on a single door labeled "Recovery: Pods 2863-2873". They nodded to each other, and Tai opened the door, then led them in.

  The recovery room was illuminated with red light. Ryder was alone, sitting on the edge of a steel slab, head in hands. He looked up at the four men and squinted. "What ..."

  "We think it may be time to attempt a shut-down of Fai-tsiri," Tai said.

  "Now hold on, we didn't agree to that yet," Ariki said. "It could be too dangerous. We really need to consider replacing Mbali first."

  Ryder was staring at them, slouched in an awkward posture, mouth slightly open. "Guys, I'm still a little dizzy right now .... Wait, is this because of the photograph?"

  Tekoha nodded. "The menhirs were bad enough. But a vessel following us for three hundred years whilst we're kept in the dark?"

  "Yes. Unacceptable," Ihaia said. "Nikau and Hemi are dead because of this, and we don't know why."

  "That's something I can't understand--how the photograph of the shuriken ship is connected with what Hemi did. What do we know about the shuriken so far?" Ryder asked.

  "Not much," Ariki said. "We can't penetrate its hull with our scans. It has not responded to repeated hailing attempts from across the EM spectrum. During interstellar flight, it accelerates and decelerates with a type of fusion rocket--which is hard to believe considering the ship is only about thirty meters in diameter. Mbali will brief us more thoroughly in the staff meeting. She seems to think it might be powered by matter-antimatter annihilation, but I have my doubts."

  "Hm. I was hoping for some clue about their biology. I'm wondering how similar they are to us," Ryder said.

  "At this point, we have no way of knowing, and it doesn't really matter right now," Tekoha said.

  "But shouldn't they be approximately similar to us in form?" Ryder asked. "Since our two species are both intelligent tool-users, presumably, they should have evolved similarly to us, and we might find a basis for commonality."

  "Well, it depends on specifically how you mean that," Tekoha said. "If you just mean they have manipulatory organs, sensory organs, locomotive organs, and so on, then the answer is yes. But if you mean they have two legs, two arms, a head with a nose and mouth--humanoid, in other words--then no, that's extremely unlikely. There are so many other possible design solutions, and so much of our morphology is based on evolutionary happenstance rather than functional necessity, it would be quite fantastically coincidental if we both turned out to be humanoid."

  "But Tekoha," Tai interjected, "are you perhaps deemphasizing convergent evolution too much? I mean, just look at dolphins and ichthyosaurs. The classical example is the eye: there are about seven different physical principles on which you could design an eye, but eyes have evolved over sixty times on Earth, completely independently. That means many branches of animal life have eyes which are kind of the same."

  "Yes, and if the aliens have eyes, I'm sure they'll appear similar to eyes in one of those Earth branches. But we're not talking just about eyes--we're talking about the overall morphology of an entire organism. Your dolphin-ichthyosaur example is more apt, but then you have to remember they both ultimately derive from reptiles."

  "Dolphins are from wolf-like land mammals."

  "Which ultimately derive from reptiles, as I just said. And even further back, from the same type of fish--as are we--so there are many jointly inherited characteristics."

  Ryder grunted. "Alright. I suppose I did take us too far afield from the immediate concern. Replacing Mbali right now could be quite dangerous: we don't know how Fai-tsiri will react, not to mention we don't have the legal authority to do so."

  "That may not be the case," Ihaia said. "The crew can vote to replace their executive under certain criteria--we just have to make sure we meet those criteria first."

  "Yeah, but what I was going to say was--" Ryder paused and blinked hard. "If we come across a habitable planet which meets all human survival requirements, and if Fai-tsiri applies Planetary Protection Policy ..."

  "We break the Policy?" Tekoha said. "Mbali, Fai-tsiri, and Control won't let us."

  "Right. But we are capable of doing it covertly, I think," Ryder said. "Obviously we wouldn't have time to load up all four thousand pods, but we should be able to do a few, as long as we're careful to avoid detection by Fai-tsiri."

  Ihaia jabbed his index finger at Ryder. "Yes! I think we could do that."

  "Just a minute," Tai said. "You know you are talking about the potential genocide of an entire world. There is a reason for the Protection Policy."

  "I'm talking about the definite death of four thousand people on this ship if we don't act soon. You're talking about a remote hypothetical scenario of overrunning an alien biome."

  "Not just a biome--an entire biosphere. And it may not be so remote."

  "Okay, so tell me. You and Tekoha are the most qualified people here to assess the risk. What are the real chances our microbes will out-compete the native life and cause a mass extinction?" Ihaia asked.

  Tai and Tekoha looked at each other.

  "It would be really hard to assign a probability to it with no further information," Tekoha said. "Do you disagree, Doctor?"

  Tai huffed and crossed his arms. "Perhaps we should be considering a more important question: what is the possibility for human survival on this planet?"

  "The integrated probe's survey is comprehensive enough for us to say with some confidence that it is at least as safe as Earth itself--perhaps more so," Tekoha said. "We can definitely deposit people without much fear."

  "Still, you'll verify the probe results on the surface? That telemetry is quite old by now," Tai said.

  "Yes, but things aren't likely to change on such a basic level during the intervening centuries," Tekoha said.

  "Then I think it's time to assume the risk and break the Policy as soon as we arrive at an inhabitable world. Has anyone been to Command Sector yet?"

  They shook their heads. "Mbali has already called all senior staff. We're supposed to be heading there now," Ihaia said.

  "Okay. How much access does Fai-tsiri have to the cryostat pods?" Ryder asked.

  "None directly," Ihaia said. "The stasis system has its own separate computer network, but it outputs data in a ship-wide interface which Fai-tsiri can access, read-only."

  "So as long as we falsify some of the output, we can mask the removal of a certain number of pods," Ryder said.

  "Well, I suppose ...."

  "Who here can do that?"

  "I can," Tekoha said.

  "I can too. Easy," Ariki said.

  "One of you has to do it now. If two people are absent from a senior staff meeting, it would be too suspicious. Get as many pods as you can fit into a Kiwi-class skiff."

  "But I would have to move all those pods myself," Ariki said.

  "Ihaia can help. He doesn't have to go to the meeting."

  "Zhong tracks my activities too closely," Ihaia said. "I'm already taking a risk standing here talking to you for as long as I am."

  "I might be able to leave the meeting early," Tai said. "I can easily make the excuse that I have to attend to my medical experiments, if I must. Ariki can set up the false interface whilst I'm in Command Sector. Right?"

  "Right," Ariki said.

  "And after we've made planetfall, someone has to unload the pods and begin the revivification process without anyone else in the landing party noticing--not to mention the skiff sensors," Tekoha said.

  "I can handle that," Ryder said. "No one pays attention to me. Mbali won't care if I'm actually working or not."

  "And the skiff sensors?" Ihaia asked.

  "There will be a
convenient malfunction during descent," Ariki said. "Sensors won't be repaired until we're ready to leave."

  "Good," Ryder said with a sigh, standing up.

  They filed out of the recovery room. Tai was in the lead, the first to reach Command Sector. Throwing shadows from their alcoves, junior staff flitted around their columnar consoles, flicking glances in his direction.

  "They're waiting for you in Conference Room Aleph," one of them called out.

  He nodded and entered the room. Kahu, Anaru, Tangaroa, and Zhong were already seated, with Mbali at the head of the table. They watched him as he took his seat, then waited in silence as the others filed in.

  "You're almost four minutes late. Was there a medical emergency?" Mbali directed her question at Tai.

  "No ma'am," Tai said.

  "Your tardiness is unacceptable. If that happens again, I shall put you all back in stasis for the remainder of the mission and revivicate replacement crew who care more about our success. Understood?"

  "Yes ma'am," Tai and the others assented.

  "Where's Ariki?"

  "There was a slight malfunction in some of the cryostats--nothing serious. He's investigating now and monitoring repairs by the Custodians," Tekoha said.

  "Then if you'll allow me to finally begin, we are orbiting the second planet in the Epsilon Indi system," Mbali said as she moved her hands over the table, sprouting diagrams and figures on its surface.

  "Ah, finally a star I've actually heard of!" Kahu said.

  She looked him without turning her head. "I could do without the commentary. As I was saying, Epsilon Indi A, the primary sun, is a class K4V; we're at a distance of four and a half light-minutes. There're a pair of class-T dwarfs orbiting about 138 light-hours out, so we can safely ignore them. This planet seems to meet many important habitability parameters. It's 0.715 terrestrial masses, a surface gravity of 0.89 g, and sea-level pressure of 0.671 atm. The atmosphere is 72 percent nitrogen and 27.7 percent oxygen, with small amounts of argon, water, methane, ammonia, neon, and carbon dioxide. Minimum recorded temperature is minus 31.3 centigrade in the polar night, and maximum is 50.3 in the equatorial day. The boiling point of water at sea level is 89.5 centigrade. The oceans cover 83 percent of the surface." She paused.

  "So the atmosphere is breathable without modification?" Tai said.

  "It would seem so. And this world would be the best candidate for settlement so far, were it not for a couple obvious things ...."

  "The atmosphere is almost certainly biogenic, given its constituents," Tekoha completed her thought.

  "Yes," Mbali said. "But that's not all. Fai-tsiri has grabbed these images of the surface." On the table, a telephoto view of a patch of land was displayed; next to the browns, grays, and ochres of the land was broad patch of tealy blue.

  "Some kind of mineral in the rock?" Zhong asked.

  "But look at it in infrared," Mbali said, changing the output spectrum range.

  "Vegetation!" Tekoha said.

  Mbali nodded sharply. "It certainly appears so. Fai-tsiri has decided to drop a skiff to investigate further. Even if there is life here, we should collect as much data as we can about this world before moving on. I needn't explain to you that the more statistical samples we have of habitable worlds, the better we can induce general knowledge."

  "Even if there is a biosphere, I would urge you to bend of Protection Policy and allow us to settle here," Tai said. "We are getting pretty desperate."

  "I'm not having this discussion on every mission segment. A decision was made to uphold the Policy, and that's final. Your priority is to develop the gene therapy. Now, I think we should discuss the thing on everyone's mind." She looked at the faces around the table.

  "The shuriken spacecraft," Ryder said.

  "Indeed. Displayed in front of you are all the sensor data we gathered of it near Magenta Sorrow."

  "And these are the only data we have of it?" Tekoha asked.

  "What do you mean? Yes of course," Mbali said.

  Tai stood up abruptly.

  "Doctor?"

  "Uh, there's something I need to take care of."

  "Excuse me?"

  "There are some experiments I'm doing, developing the anti-radiation medicine--very time-sensitive. I'm sorry, but I really have to go attend to them."

  "Then go," Mbali said. "We need a functional version of the medicine as soon as possible."

  "Yes ma'am." Tai left the conference room and passed swiftly through Command Sector to the circumferential corridor.

  Passers-by occasionally nodded at him, but he didn't notice. By the time he reached Ariki's recovery room, his forehead was lightly perspiring. He slid the door open. "Ariki?"

  "Just in time." Ariki closed a drawer of photonic circuitry. "The mask is in place, and I'm ready to start shipping people out. On a Kea-class skiff, we could fit fifteen pods into the equipment hold."

  "Only fifteen? That's not enough people to start a colony," Tai said.

  "Of course not. The minimum viable population is two thousand; did you think we could fit that many on a skiff all at once? They would have to reproduce by cloning in such a small gene pool."

  "Right. I guess I hadn't thought of that until just now." Ariki began typing a sequence on one of the cryostat's control pads. "What are you doing? What can I do?" Tai asked.

  "Releasing the first one. Take a look." Ariki pushed a final button and waved him over. Tai bent down and peered through the cryostat hatch window; he could see the pod retracting down a long tube. "I need you to get down to the skiff bay and make sure it's clear of crewmen. It'll take these pods couple minutes to make their way there, but no one can be around when they start popping out of the wall."

  "But what should I say if--"

  "Make something up! Go now! You have two minutes."

  "Right. Okay ...." Tai went out, locking the door behind him. He looked no one in the eye as he rushed to the skiff bay.

  Only a small area of the bay was lit. He approached, and saw a crewman standing near a skiff, looking down at his arm-calc.

  "Excuse me, ah ... Jin?" Tai said.

  The man looked up. "Jun. Oh, Doctor. What can I do for you?"

  "Well ... I'm sorry to bother you, but I've learned some people may not be compatible with the gene therapy I've been developing, so I'd like you to go to the medical bay to have another scan."

  "But I just had my post-stasis examination. Can't you use the data from that?"

  "No, I'm afraid not. We'll be scanning for different things this time."

  "Okay, let me just finish up here, then I'll head over the to med bay." He smiled.

  "I'm afraid you need to go now. It's very time sensitive--I have to get this done now. I'm about to make planetfall."

  "Okay, fine. Aren't you coming with me?"

  "I'll go in a bit. The auto-nurse will take care of you in the meantime."

  "Okay ...." Jun walked to the spoke ladder and began climbing. There was a soft noise from a bulkhead on the other side of the bay. Tai rushed over and saw the first cryostat pod emerging from a deposition tube. He looked back to the spoke ladder, but Jun was out of sight. Tai pushed the pod on its spherical rollers to the nearest big skiff, then tapped his arm-calc.

  "Ariki, can you hear me?"

  "Yeah ...." The speaker on his arm-calc said.

  "We're on a secure channel."

  "What is it?"

  "There was someone in the skiff bay. I sent him to medical, but when he gets there, my story is going to break down. I'm afraid he might come back here."

  "By the ancestors! Why didn't you tell him something that would hold up?"

  "It was the best I could do! I don't have anything else," Tai said.

  "Well, it's going to be about ten or fifteen minutes before all of the pods arrive in the skiff bay."

  "What! No, no, that's way too long! The landing party will come down here to board the skiff before I can get all the pods loaded!"

  "Oh. You might be r
ight. Okay, I'll see if I can accelerate the process. You just load the pods as soon as you get them. And don't bother me again unless it's an emergency."

  "Ah! Oh, oh, oh ...." Tai pushed the first pod into the skiff's cargo receptacle and ran back to the bulkhead where the next two pods were emerging. Sweat was already running from his temples to collect in droplets under his chin. He guided two pods over to the skiff, one with each hand, eyes constantly glancing up to the spoke ladder. He loaded the pods, then ran back for the next two and repeated the process.

  "Jun to Tai," the ship's intercom said.

  "Tai here; go ahead."

  "Doctor, the auto-nurse doesn't seem to be activated right now. What should I do?"

  "Oh right! I'm uh ... sorry for the mix-up." Tai pushed two pods across the bay floor as fast as he could. "Just lie down on a bed, and I'll be there in a few minutes! Ah!"

  "Are you alright Doctor? What are you doing?"

  "Oh, I'm loading some medical equipment in preparation for the drop. It's very sensitive--and also heavy."

  "Okay, I'll wait for you here. Jun out."

  Tai wiped his forehead as he ran. Five minutes later, he had loaded twelve, with three to go, when he noticed a faint light shining down the spoke ladder's tube. He punched his arm-calc. "Ariki!"

  "What?"

  "I think people are coming! I still have three more to load!"

  "Crack open a bay door. That will cause the radial hatches to seal automatically, and they won't be able to enter the bay."

  "And expose me to the vacuum?! You're crazy!" Tai pushed two more to the skiff and loaded them in the time he was talking to Ariki.

  "I'm done here, heading for the skiff bay. Good luck Doctor."

  Tai made it back to the bulkhead when members of the landing party came into view and set foot in the bay. With great effort, Tai tilted the last pod back into the deposition tube, shoved it back along the tracks, and sealed the hatch. He went out amongst the parked skiffs and casually sealed the Kea's hatches before meeting the group walking towards him from the spoke tube.

  "Hi Chief," Tai said to Zhong.

  "Doctor. What's wrong with you? You're all wet .... Shouldn't you be working in the med lab?" Zhong responded.

  Tai nodded and smiled with his eyes closed. "Ah, yes. I mean no. I mean I am, but I just needed to pop down here to get some tools I need."

  "Alright," Zhong frowned. "Carry on." Zhong turned away from him and waved the group towards a Kiwi-class skiff. Tangaroa opened its hatch and was the first to board.

  "What are you doing?" Tai asked.

  "Fai-tsiri approved planetfall and chose a landing zone," Zhong said. "We're heading down now."

  "I know, but wouldn't you rather take that Kea?" Tai pointed to the skiff loaded with the cryostat pods.

  "No," Zhong said.

  "Well why not?"

  "Why would we? It's too big. A Kiwi is perfectly adequate for a team and equipment package of this size."

  Tai's mouth opened and closed soundlessly. Zhong ignored him and went to the Kiwi skiff. Ariki appeared, descending from the tube, and Tai rushed over to the base of the ladder.

  "They're boarding the wrong skiff!" Tai hissed as Ariki set foot onto the bay floor.

  "Calm down! We might be able to work this to our advantage," Ariki said quietly.

  "And there's one more I didn't have time to load--it's still at the end of the deposition tube!"

  "Listen--you can take it down later, by yourself. After we leave, you'll have time to load the last pod," Ariki said.

  "But--"

  "You'll have to make a good excuse, like you need to go to the planet to collect samples for developing medicine."

  "They might approve a Tawaki for that, but a Kea?"

  "Do I have to think of everything? Just say you need the extra cargo room for big scanning equipment. They're all boarded now--I have to go." Ariki turned and jogged towards the waiting landing craft.

  Tai watched him board the skiff, then climbed the spoke ladder. When he was a few meters into the radial tube, a hatch sealed below him, indicating the bay was about to be depressurized. Tai continued on to the habitat ring. The medical bay was empty--Jun was nowhere in sight. He looked into his lab, slowly surveying the equipment set up on the bench. Then he entered the lab, sealing the door behind. Moving more quickly now, he went to a smooth portion of the bulkhead and made a gesture with his fingers over the surface. A terminal window displayed itself, with a keypad of ideographs on the side. He pushed some of the buttons and called up the output from Ryder Kask's helmet camera. Then he pulled up a stool and sat in front of the video feed.

  Ryder seemed to be walking along a beach, looking at an ocean. He turned away from the water, towards sandy bluffs topped with bluish broccoli-like growths. The sky was green. Tai watched the team unload equipment onto the sand and make their way up to the blufftops, avoiding trampling on any vegetation. The land grew more hilly away from the ocean until it broke into forested mountains.

  Tai stood and went back to his lab bench, checking progress on experiments. He made some adjustments whilst occasionally looking up at Ryder's progress across the alien landscape. After a few minutes, Tai put down his tools and left the medical bay. He walked slowly, taking deep breaths. Command Sector was scuttling with technicians, and the air was filled with their lowly muttered chatter. Mbali stood with arms crossed, eyes blanked by the cover of her virtual-reality membranes. Tai moved close to her and cleared his throat.

  "Busy?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "Well, I need to ask--tell--you something."

  "What?"

  "I'm close to having an efficient form of the radiation therapy ready, but I'm missing a few key compounds which are really hard to synthesize in the lab. But many of them are produced by some plants and fungi. I'd like to test some samples from the planet's surface to see if I can find them there."

  "Then radio Tekoha and tell him what you need. I'm sure he's capable of collecting them."

  "Yes, but it's not that simple. I need to use some medical scanning equipment which they don't have with them right now. I have to take it down there."

  "I need you in the lab working on that medicine, Doctor."

  "But there's really nothing else I can do there right now. Going down to the planet is the most efficient way to make progress at this point."

  "Fine. You have permission to take a Tawaki to the LZ."

  "I can't fit the equipment onto a Tawaki."

  "Fine! Take whatever skiff you need. Anything else?"

  "No ma'am."

  "Very well--dismissed."

  Tai nodded, though she couldn't see him, and strolled at a controlled pace from Command Sector. Then he increased to a half-jog to the skiff bay. When he descended the spoke ladder, he looked down into the bay and saw a single light on. He cursed and went back up the ladder, returning to the med bay. Once there, Tai grabbed a jet injector and loaded it with a selected vial. He then put the injector into a toolkit, which he strapped on, and returned to the skiff bay.

  He walked towards the light. It was Jun, fussing over his arm-calc again. "Jun! So sorry about before!"

  Jun looked up at Tai's meekly smiling face. "Indeed, there seems to have been some sort of mix-up," he said without smiling back.

  "Yes, well, the good news is I sorted it all out now. I looked at your genome on file, and it turns out you should have very good compatibility with the therapy. But the wrinkle is I do have to prepare your body to accept the therapy by giving you a dose of another drug now."

  "Okay, sure."

  "Great." Tai removed the jet injector from his toolkit.

  "You brought it all the way down here for me?"

  "Well, I've been going around giving it to the crew who need it. Don't worry, the nozzle on this injector is fresh and sterile. Now, if you'll just show me your arm--very good." The injector clicked and hissed as he injected a small patch of skin on Jun's inner forearm.

  "H
ow shall we know if it worked?"

  "I'll give you a blood test later. In the meantime, feel free to stop by the medical bay if you feel any side effects."

  "Side effects? Like what?"

  "Well, it would be very unusual, but some people might feel a bit faint, or rather sleepy."

  "Oh, huh. Actually, maybe it's psychological, but I already feel a little funny."

  "Funny?"

  "Yes, like a sequoia in a cyclone which ... huh ... ah--" Jun's eyes rolled back into his head and Tai caught him as he fell. He laid him gently on the deck and checked his vital signs, then heaved him up by the armpits. Tai pulled Jun, heels dragging behind, onto the Kea with the stored cryostat pods. He strapped him into a crash couch in the personnel hold, then jogged back onto the bay deck and went to the deposition tube in the bulkhead. He unsealed the hatch and hauled out the last cryostat pod.

  Two minutes later, Tai was strapped into the Kea, the cargo hold loaded with fifteen pods, all hatches sealed. He took a deep breath, put a comms bud into his ear, and pulled up a display console next to his chair. He opened a terminal and typed some commands into the sensor array controllers. "Skiff, acknowledge receipt of vocal command input."

  "Receipt acknowledged," the skiff said.

  "Initiate launch sequence. Display relevant data in my terminal, diagrammatic form, verbose quantitative output." Desaturated pastel lines curved over his black display, movements in sync with their text labels. Tai tapped a corner to switch the display language from Globalese to New Maori. The currently executing task appeared as a line of text in the upper left. He waited, watching the diagrams indicating permission queries, the movement of the launch rails, the sealing of deck hatches, the depressurization, the unlocking and opening of bay doors, and the final rail extension. He saw most of the calculations done for launch-timing and trajectory, the equation flow slowed down to a time-scale he could process, though barely. The docking clamps released, and he was weightless, watching the projected trajectory slowly changing to the traveled one. He saw that the planet below was labeled as ninety percent of Earth's diameter. He closed his eyes for a couple minutes, then looked down at the display again. The skiff was already passing through the upper mesosphere, and began to tremble with turbulence.

  "Mbali to Tai."

  "Tai here."

  "Doctor, Fai-tsiri reports all your skiff sensors have just gone dark."

  "Yes, I can confirm I'm experiencing a malfunction. Not sure of its origin yet."

  "Do you think you should abort?"

  "Not yet. I'll keep you apprised if there are any further problems."

  "Acknowledged. Mbali out."

  Tai turned off his external comms. "Show me the landing zone mapped onto visual telemetry," Tai ordered the computer. A portion of the display devoted itself to an overhead photograph of the beach, hills, and forest. The landing zone was a demarcated rectangle of beach. "Show me the location of crewmen Kask and Tekoha." Two small triangles appeared on the map. "Skiff, I need you to mark a secondary LZ here." Tai pressed his finger to the image. Another rectangle formed next the forest's edge, near the triangles. "Good. Now I need this skiff to land in this new secondary zone." The projected trajectory altered its curve slightly as its endpoint moved to the new zone. Tai watched and waited as the projected converted to actual, and the endpoint was reached with a gentle cessation of movement.

  Tai unstrapped himself and checked on the unconscious Jun, then donned an environment suit in the two-step sterilization process. He was lowered in the narrow cylinder and stepped down to a soft ground covered with knee-high blue-green fronds. He saw Ryder and Tekoha approach him from the seaward direction.

  "I see the killing has already begun," Tekoha said, indicating the crushed vegetation under the skiff landing pads.

  "Oh, they'll grow back," Tai said. "I've set comms to a secure channel amongst the three of us. Is there anything I need to know about before I begin unloading? Any hazards?"

  "No hazards to you I know of. Just try not to destroy everything in your way."

  "I intend to move all the pods into the forest, where Unbounded can't see them without doing any active scanning--which, hopefully, it doesn't."

  "I don't expect it to anymore."

  "The pods are heavy. I think some of these blue ferns are going to suffer along the way."

  "It's a good thing Unbounded is not in a geosynchronous orbit, or they'd see what you're doing just from passive scans," Ryder said looking at his arm-calc. "You have fewer than one hundred minutes before it passes over us again."

  "We'll be done long before then," Tai said, touching a button on his arm-calc which lowered the skiff's freight elevator. Two pods were already on the pad. "Okay, help me unhook these and push them beyond the tree-line."

  "We'll move in a straight path, single file, to crush as few plants as possible," Tekoha said.

  "Are they really plants this time?" Ryder asked as they got onto the elevator platform and began unfastening the holdfasts.

  "Well, they are photoautotrophic, multicellular organisms with differentiated tissues. Not quite like Earth plants, but similar enough," Tekoha said. "Quite frankly, I was astonished when I saw the photographs of this world--though I guess I shouldn't have been. It was just striking how the planet is in a teal grip of vegetation--so Earth-like, and so different from everywhere else we've been so far."

  "What do you mean by a 'steel grip' of vegetation?" Ryder asked.

  "I said teal, not steel--because the plants are mostly teal in color."

  Tai lugged the first pod off the platform and began pushing it across the ground.

  "I'll do that," Ryder said, stepping down and taking over Tai's haul. "You can load the next two on the elevator whilst we take these."

  Tai nodded and raised himself on the elevator whilst Tekoha and Ryder pushed through the ground cover. After he loaded the pods, went through sterilization again, and was lowered to the ground, Tekoha and Ryder were not back yet. He waited on the platform, examining his surroundings. The ground-cover plants did not really look like ferns; they were more reminiscent of water-lilies, with broad, circular leaves. In their shade, the soil was covered in something else which looked like a brown lichen. Tai peered towards the forest. The "trees" had an inverted umbrella shape, white trunks curved or twisted in various ways, but always managing to align their canopies to the sky. The ground-cover in the forest was different, composed of short fur-like yellow-green growth. He saw two suited figures emerge from the trees and trace their path of flattened lilies back to the skiff. Tai began to haul the next pod off the platform.

  "What can you tell me about this world's biosphere?" Tai asked Tekoha when he stepped up to help him.

  "Well, the average global temperature of the planet is cooler than Earth's, which lowers habitability. So biodiversity is slightly lower than Earth. All of the pollen appears to be wind-blown ...."

  "But are there any animals at all?"

  "Oh yes. Here, let me show you--" Tekoha was calling up some data on his arm-calc, but Tai waved him off.

  "That's okay, you can show me later. Let's just finish moving the pods." Tekoha nodded, and they continued working in the same fashion for almost an hour before all fifteen pods were safely concealed in the forest.

  "The sun doesn't seem to have moved much since I got here," Tai commented.

  "That's because the rotation period is almost 43 Earth-hours long," Tekoha said. "Here, let me show you that animal." He pointed up to the canopy; hanging from a white branch was a pale, hairless creature. It was bilaterally symmetrical, with two pairs of tightly folded limbs, but did not appear to have any discernible head--though it did have two rows of pits in its skin. "It's about eight kilograms. The indentations you see are sensory organs which detect electric fields from other animals. I think it's an ambush predator, but I haven't seen the prey yet."

  "Is that a mammal?" Ryder asked when he moved to look.

  "Oh no, of course not," Tekoha said.
"Mammals are an invention of Earth biology. Think of all the characteristics we assign to mammals--these characteristics are solutions to specific design problems--how to maintain homeostatic equilibrium, for example. The animals on this world will have some of the same solutions, as well as some different ones, but mixed together in a way we might perceive as strange," Tekoha said. Ryder gave him a blank look, so Tekoha continued: "For example, I mentioned the terrestrial Ediacarans whilst we were on Cold Trove. They were animals in the most general sense that they were moving organisms, but they were not metazoans proper, and we are not their descendants. So that is a clear example of an animal group which does not fall into any of the modern terrestrial phyla of animals."

  "Hm," Ryder shrugged.

  "Are there any large carnivores around here?" Tai asked.

  "I don't know--it's possible. But the largest animal I've seen so far is under ten kilograms."

  "How common are venomous creatures?" They began to walk back to the skiff.

  "I have not found any. I'm sure they're around, but the fact I have not yet detected any points to a rate of venomization which is not higher than Earth's modern average. Why?"

  "As we discussed aboard ship, I'm concerned about the well-being of the fifteen settlers--what dangers they might encounter upon revivification," Tai said.

  "I haven't surveyed the entire biosphere, but I can say with some confidence this biome is rather benign. You brought all the survival tools, correct?" Tekoha asked.

  "I'm leaving them with clothing, tents, survival toolkits, medical toolkits, radios, a couple days' worth of food and water. By the way, what is the bio-chirality?"

  "Same as us. They'll be able to eat local food," Tekoha.

  "But then they could also get local infections," Tai responded.

  "Not necessarily. Susceptibility to infection depends on a lot more than just chirality. I think the differences in our microbiologies are probably enough to preclude infections from viruses and bacteria--though biotoxins might still be an issue, of course." They arrived at the skiff.

  "Alright," Tai nodded. "I suppose that's the best report I can hope for. Help me get the rest of the supplies off the skiff." The three of them rode the platform back up into the hold. Tai checked his arm-calc. "I'm seeing that Ariki, Tangaroa, Kahu, and Anaru are still near the shore. Anyone else on the landing party?"

  "No, they're it," Ryder said as he lifted a toolkit from a storage slot. "We should be good."

  "And about seventy minutes remain until Unbounded is overhead again," Tekoha said.

  "I missed the discussion about the pursuing spacecraft," Tai said as they were lowered to the ground with the supply packages.

  "Don't worry, you didn't miss much," Tekoha said. "Mbali reiterated her policy of avoiding contact with extraterrestrial intelligences because of the unknown factors and dangers involved."

  "But did she give you any new information on the ship itself?"

  "No," Tekoha said. "Not other than the fact that it appears their technology is highly compact. We're not sure how they fit engines, radiation shields, and everything else in a ship that size."

  They walked along the trail to the forest as the freight elevator retracted into the hold. In five minutes they entered the trees and walked under the filtered light for a few meters before reaching the cryostat pods, which had been aligned in a neat row. The three of them distributed the supplies amongst the fifteen pods.

  Tai began entering commands into each of the pod control panels. "I'm setting their timers to begin the revivification process tomorrow during the local morning. Then they'll have about 21 hours of daylight to orient themselves," he said. After they made all the preparations they could, the three of them hiked back to the skiff.

  Once inside, they climbed up to the personnel hold, where Ryder saw the unconscious Jun in a crash couch. "What the .... What's he doing here?"

  "I didn't have much of a choice," Tai said. "He almost caught me with the pods. He'll wake up in the med bay in a couple hours, feeling as good as new."

  The Unbounded comms jumped into their earpieces. "Mbali to landing team."

  Tekoha opened his microphone to the general comms. "Tekoha here, go ahead."

  "Be aware Fai-tsiri has detected the unknown vessel approaching your position from the stratosphere at Mach 3."

  "What do you mean 'the unknown vessel'?" Zhong said on the line. "The shuriken ship?"

  "Affirmative. It appears to have followed us from Magenta Sorrow."

  "ETA?" Zhong asked.

  "If it continues to decelerate at the same rate, it will pass over the beach LZ in five minutes," Mbali said.

  "Understood," Zhong said. "We'll head for the skiff and prepare for lift-off in the event of hostile action."

  "Acknowledged," Mbali replied.

  The three men in Tai's Kea waited for any further security orders from Zhong, but none came. "Should we move the skiff?" Ryder asked his immediate companions on the local channel.

  "Yes," Tai said. "I think that's a good idea. We should move the skiff to the beach; I don't want them to scan this area and draw attention to the pods."

  "Agreed," Tekoha said. "After all, their interest in us appears to know no bounds." They lifted off, with Tai instructing the Kea to land on the beach a hectometer from the other skiff.

  A minute later, they touched down. "And Fai-tsiri kept knowledge of the shuriken to herself all these centuries whilst quietly watching our pursuers. I think it is time we shut her down," Tai said softly.

  "You and I are in total agreement, Doctor," Ryder said. They sat in silence for a minute, Tai staring at the deck plates.

  "So, should we stay inside and wait for the shuriken to arrive?" Ryder asked whilst looking through a false window along the white sand and green waterscape.

  "This finally could be first contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence," Tekoha said. "I'm getting out. You guys can do what you want." He unstrapped himself and entered the sterilization tube. Ryder and Tai looked at each other and followed suit.

  After all three had hopped onto the sand, they walked towards the other group of suited figures gathered near the Kiwi skiff. Tekoha frequently tilted his head to the sky as if expecting to see the alien craft at any moment.

  "This reminds me of Piha Beach," Tai said.

  "Plus mountains and weird alien plants, minus the palm trees," Ryder said. "And the water is calm and shallow. When is the ship supposed to get here?"

  "Now," Tekoha said. "It's slightly overdue. They must have decelerated more. Let's pick up the pace." They jogged, and reached the others a couple minutes later.

  "Why didn't you land in the designated LZ?" Zhong said to Tai as soon as he slowed to stand with them. Ariki, Kahu, and Tangaroa stood at his side.

  "I wanted to land near Tekoha's location," Tai said. "His knowledge of the biome would help me locate the substances I need for my medicine."

  "From now on, Doctor, if you ever land a skiff again, you'll land it where you're told," Zhong said.

  Tai nodded. "Understood." They looked at the sky around them. "Where's Anaru?"

  "He's in the skiff, prepared for lift-off if it becomes necessary. What's that?" Zhong pointed out to sea.

  "I don't see anything," Tangaroa said.

  "I see it!" Tekoha said. "Use your visor's zoom function."

  "I can see it without zoom now," Ryder said. A black speck emerged from a white cloud and grew bigger. In a minute it was a dark disk, and then a minute later it was a metallic starfish gliding fifty meters up, arms parallel to the ground. At about two hectometers out from the beach, it slowed to a crawl.

  "It's scanning us with lidar and radar," Zhong said, looking at his arm-calc.

  "Mbali to landing team! What's going on down there? I'm detecting an infrared spike at the alien craft's location."

  "I don't see anything unusual," Zhong said. He switched his vision to infrared. "Wait, the air below the craft is heating up."

  "Look!" Ryder
pointed. But it was unnecessary, because now the thin blue flame pointing down from the ship's center was clearly visible. "It's preparing to land?"

  "That's fusion flame, not landing thrusters!" Zhong shouted. He rushed to a toolkit lying nearby on the sand and pulled out a heavy sidearm.

  "Wait!" Tekoha said. "Are you certain it's going to attack?" Steam billowed from the water's surface, and the craft approached the land at a faster rate again.

  "There's no reason to turn on a fusion rocket inside an atmosphere unless you're going to use it as a weapon. Here," Zhong said and handed Tekoha a thick tube. "Attosecond lasers. Hit the hull for as long as you can before the battery is drained." He handed out the heavy lasers to the others, who mounted them on their shoulders and fired with a heavy buzzing sound. The ship reached the shore, and the sand below it glowed and melted.

  "Are we having any effect?" Ryder asked.

  "I don't know! The steam is scattering the lasers," Zhong said. "I don't see any changes on the hull." The shuriken floated over bubbling pools of yellow glass, towards the Kea.

  "Oh no!" Tai threw down his laser and began running towards the other skiff. "Hey!" he shouted repeatedly and waved his arms.

  "What the hell is he doing?" Zhong said. "He's going to get himself killed!"

  Tai ran forward until the heat in the air stopped him. He fell to his knees and covered his head. The blue flame touched the Kea's back, and the hull began to sag. Tai screamed as the Kea melted and crumpled, liquid metal sputtering as holes were punched in the hull by superheated air expanding and escaping.

  The shuriken's blue flame disappeared, and the ship landed on the bluff above the beach. Whilst the Kea's wreckage partly sank into the liquefied sand, Tangaroa ran forward and tried to pull Tai up to his feet.

  "Zhong to Anaru. Prepare for lift-off." Zhong gestured to the others to pack their lasers into the carrying case.

  A circular hatch opened on one of the shuriken's arms, and something long and black dropped to the ground. It slithered like a snake down the bluff.

  "Doctor Tai, what are you doing?" Tangaroa said. "Get up, we have to go." Tai allowed Tangaroa to heave him to his feet.

  The black snake, about eight meters long, undulated towards them across the sand. It reared its forward end; Tai looked up to see its lamprey-like, mechanical face. They turned and ran towards the others. A beam of light licked out from the angular visage, and Tangaroa's blackened skeleton fell forward of its own momentum, scattering a thick cloud of flesh turned ash. The bones broke on the sand in a hail of sparks.

  As Zhong whipped out the heavy laser from its case again, Tai continued to run towards him, and his eye caught more movement as another dark ophidian sprouted from the shuriken. Ariki was almost back at the skiff, which fired its thrusters under Anaru's command.

  Tai reached the open case and hoisted up a laser; he stood next to Zhong and yelled at the top of his lungs as he fired at the monster bearing down on them. Then the battery died, and he tossed the laser aside for another. He brought it to bear when there was a splash of sand from a spot a few meters away. As the sand cloud settled, a Tawaki-class skiff unfolded in a small crater.

  The ophidian halted its advance and turned to face the new skiff. There was a glint of sunlight. A metal and carbon fiber sculpture in the form of a human female--Fai-tsiri--stepped forward, dragging something heavy in each hand. With a sudden upward movement of her arms, she brought to bear two projectile weapons, each the size of one of her own legs. Thunder snapped as magnetically accelerated cobalt slugs tore the air at hypersonic speeds, creating ephemeral vacua in their wakes. Tai and Zhong stood frozen as the ophidian split in half and dropped to the sand, immediately ceasing all movement. Fai-tsiri spun on her heels as the second one, lancing coherent light, reached the beach and accelerated towards her. She fired again, each gun thundering twice.

  Tai and Zhong dropped their weapons and ran towards the waiting skiff. As they climbed onto the freight elevator platform, Tai looked behind to see Fai-tsiri running towards them at inhuman speed, her guns carried under each arm. She jumped onto the platform next to Zhong as the skiff lifted off slowly. She set one of the weapons onto the platform and pulled up the other to the ready, aiming it at the first broken ophidian lying on the sand. The black skin near the head split open, and Tai could see lights inside. There was movement, and something emerged. Tai couldn't see what it was, but before he could zoom in, Fai-tsiri fired her projectile once again, and the thing blew apart, sending dark fluids splattering across bright sand.

  At an altitude of twenty meters, the platform began to retract up into the hull. Fai-tsiri looked at Zhong, who was staring at her with his mouth open.

  "Security Chief Zhao Zhong," she said. "Are you in need of any further assistance?"