Monotony

                Cari had the most boring job in the history of space travel. Some people got to fly the ship, or lead the landing parties. Other people got to run tests in the laboratories, or else repair the engines after a battle. Heck, even the janitors had a more exciting job than Cari. She heard them in the lounge, talking about all of the weird things you could find while mopping a spaceship corridor. Cari? She never had anything exciting to tell her friends. That was because nothing exciting ever happened to the scanner.

That was Cari's job – scanner. She was in charge of running the ship's scanners. That's it. The people with the exciting work would fly the ship up to a new planet, and Cari would scan it. It was always the same: a volcanic waste, a frozen tundra, a gaseous monster, a dust ball. Their ship had been sent out in search of extraterrestrial life, but Cari was staring to doubt that life on other planets really existed. The closest they had come was that batch of microorganisms frozen in a glacier on one of the planets they had checked out last week.

"What's got you down?"

Cari jumped, and her chin slipped off of her palm and smacked into the screen in front of her. She glared reproachfully at the speaker, Captain Prou. Prou, a generally good-tempered man, grinned.

"Sorry," he said. "You looked like you were about to fall asleep, though. Have you been getting enough shuteye?"

"Plenty," Cari said.

"Then what's up?"

"First you ask me why I'm down, now you ask me what's up," she teased. She twisted a control on her scanners to narrow the range.

"You ought to be excited," Prou said. "This is a new solar system! A whole handful of new planets to scan."

"Yippee," Cari said without enthusiasm. "A whole handful of the same old thing."

Prou frowned and sat down beside her. "All right. What's up? No jokes, now. When something's bugging one of my officers this badly, I want to know what it is."

"Prou, how many solar systems have we checked out?"

"Eighty-three. Soon to be eighty-four."

"Right. And what have we found?"

"Some microorganisms."

"Exactly. I signed up to find aliens, not to make an interstellar catalog of a bunch of lifeless rocks."

"Ah." Prou's frown became a knowing smile. "The monotony's getting to you, eh? Join the club."

"What?" Cari whirled to face him. "There's no way everyone else gets this bored! I've heard them in the lounge, day after day. They always talk about course changes, or engine repairs, or – whatever!"

"So?" Prou demanded. "What else do they have to talk about? It's been weeks since our last skirmish and any action. How many course changes do you think you could stand before it gets boring? How many rock samples could you collect, day after day? How many soil tests could you run? Your monotony's just a different brand, that's all."

Cari shifted in her seat. "Well . . . maybe." She glance at her scan screen, then turned to face it so fast that she cricked her neck. For several seconds, she just stared in amazement.

Prou nudged her with his shoulder. She didn't respond.

"Everything all right, Cari? You look shocked."

"It's this small blue planet, Captain, the one we're approaching. The readings I get are weird. And . . . and just look!"

Prou leaned over her shoulder and gave a soft exclamation. "Well! Look at that. It's pretty similar to our planet, isn't it? Just a bit smaller." He straightened. "Frei!" he barked.

The pilot jumped.

"Bring us right alongside that planet, the third one from the star!" Prou commanded.

"Yes, sir!" Frei began pressing the controls with speedy precision, and a moment later, the ship dropped into orbit around the little planet.

Cari worked her scanners to their limits, and after several eternal minutes, she leapt from her seat. "My god!" she shouted. "Prou, look! Life-forms! Complex life-forms! Look at the variety – this planet's a regular zoo!" Stunned, she sank back into her chair as the bridge erupted into cheers. Her stupor didn't last long, however. She soon pulled herself out of it and resumed her scans. Detecting radio waves, she slipped on her headset and tapped into them.

Prou raised his voice over the cheering and exclamations. "Got anything else?" he asked her.

"These things have a civilization," Cari breathed in wonder, listening hard to the radio signals and barely noticing the captain. "What a crazy language! Let's see if our translator can hack it." She tied in the translator, and in a moment, comprehensible words flooded into her ears. With a dazed laugh, she pulled off her headset and clapped it over Prou's ears. "Listen to that!" she said. "They call this planet Earth! God, this is better than we expected. I'll bet you anything that in half a century or so, they'll be up here in space with us!"

Cari returned to her scans as Captain Prou listened to the signals in amazed silence. Her job might be boring most of the time, but when it got exciting, nothing could top it.

"I guess everyone gets bored," she mumbled to herself. "I wonder if those aliens do, too? What should we call them? Earthlings?"