Mission Time: +254.28 Earth-years
Metallic rings slid up around Tekoha, retracting into the ceiling.
"You can step down now," Tai said as he tapped a wall console. "You're all clear."
"Thanks Doctor," Tekoha said, lowering himself from the glowing circular platform. "I was wondering if you have a moment before your next patient comes in."
"You're my last one for the day. Everyone came out of stasis with no problems, as usual. Don't know how long that will last."
"Then let me distract you from your worries for a moment." He walked over to the wall console and pulled up a blank terminal. "You must have heard what I found on Cold Trove."
"Yes ...."
"As someone interested in biological matters, I thought you could appreciate this." Tekoha's fingers danced out a pattern on the screen, and images of the alien fossils appeared. "These are scans I took at the last moment before I was ordered back."
Tai's nose drew closer to the images. "Absolutely incredible. The diversity of symmetries. The soft tissue detail. This fauna is half a gigayear old?"
"Yes. Without the ice catastrophe, that planet may have ended up very similar to modern Earth."
He smiled, eyes darting briefly to Tekoha. "I suppose no matter how this mission ends, we were lucky to be here, to experience this."
Tekoha nodded sharply. "I agree, whole-heartedly. It seems most of the crew is so focused on the mission, they don't take a moment to acknowledge what we've accomplished so far."
Tai shrugged. "They're worried about their survival. Unfortunately, in times of great need, science becomes a luxury."
"Somehow I doubt what you're doing in there is a luxury," Tekoha gestured to the open door of an adjoining room, in which microscopes and tissue culture stations were visible.
"I'm growing a tissue bank and developing various bionic implants with some minerals picked up from Cold Trove. It may be a stop-gap for when people's organs start failing. Ultimately, though, the replacement parts are just as radioactive as human bodies. The more material we can gather on our stops, the better."
Tekoha nodded. "Well, I'll leave you to it." He headed for the exit.
"Tekoha," Tai said. He was staring at the fossil images on the wall. "Perhaps you could put in a request to Mbali for me. She may not like it, but I would like to join a landing party for the next planetfall we make."
"Sure, I'll see what I can do." Tekoha exited into the circumferential corridor.
Tai shut down the machines in the medical bay and went into the adjoining laboratory. The spotlights in the ceiling brightened, following him around the lab tables. Other lights dimmed and went off in the areas he vacated. For nearly an hour he went from monitor to monitor, looking at displays from microscopes, adjusting environmental parameters of tissue cultures, and controlling gene-sequencing. Then the lights in the medical bay turned on, and Tekoha appeared in the lab doorway.
"You're on," Tekoha said. "We're going down now."
"Thank you Tekoha. How long will you spend on the surface?"
"Don't know. But Doctor ..." Tekoha smiled. "We found liquid water."
"That's fantastic news. But I can't go with you now; I still have work to do here. I'll join you in a Tawaki-class skiff when I'm done."
"Very well. Don't be too long. The weather's balmy!" He left, and Tai turned back to his instruments. Robotic arms extended down from the ceiling and performed delicate grafts.
An hour later, Tai left his lab and walked to the skiff bay. He put on a pressure suit in the skiff's alcove and was sterilized by an electric membrane as a mechanical arm inserted him into the single-chambered craft. Titanium petals folded down, the alcove was sealed off from from the bay, and the air was pumped out. The floor opened, and the rails telescoped from the ceiling, pushing him outside the hull.
Tai muttered to himself as he monitored and adjusted controls. "Timing release; bay door facing planetside." He became weightless as the spinship receded above his head. "Borrowing rotational momentum for linear acceleration into the atmosphere, thank you very much." He nodded to himself. "Of course, the orbit is geosynchronous but not precisely geostationary, so my linear throw is actually a parabola--and the end-point is slightly off-target. Atmospheric breaking, turning--and now the descent path is helical."
"Acknowledged, Doctor Tai. Happy landing," someone from the spinship responded.
When the altimeter read two kilometers, he could make out the Kea skiff parked on a wrinkled, brown plain, pock-marked with circular lakes. The green waters were limned from the brown rock by bright oranges and reds, and they vented tall stacks of steam, all leaning at fifty-degree angles. Tai tightened his spiral and fired landing thrusters, setting down twenty meters from the larger skiff. With engines powered down, his small vessel unfolded like an upside-down lotus flower as his harness slithered away, and then he carefully stepped onto the soil.
Tai walked slowly to where the others were gathered around a small water hole. Past them, the land sloped gently downwards to a tidal flat, beyond which lay only the bright reflections of a sea.
Tekoha was wading in the tidal zone, the water-level half-way to his knees. He was walking away from a round stone, back to dry land. The others were huddled in swift discussion. Tai noticed Ryder was standing just outside the group, listening; he went to join him.
"What's got them so excited?" Tai asked him.
Ryder pointed at the colorful edge of the steaming water hole.
"Oxidation of iron in the soil? What is the oxygen level of the air, by the way?" Tai looked at his arm-calc.
"Zero-point-one percent. No, Doctor. That is life."
"Yes!" Tekoha said loudly in their earpieces as he stepped onto dry land, carrying a toolkit. "This is magnificent! A momentous ..."
"This is a disaster," Ryder said. "We found our cake, but we can't eat it. It's a habitable world, mostly uninhabited, except the microbes. Planetary Protection Policy clearly states we may not settle on a world with life. We may not even breathe its air."
"Hold on, let's not get ahead of ourselves," Tekoha said. "These organisms use monomers of opposite chirality from Earth biology. They can't eat us, and we can't eat them. They don't use the same amino acids, and the nucleotides of their genetic material are not the five found in Earth life, which means they can't infect us, nor we them. We would be completely parallel, separate biospheres. I think that's an argument worth putting to Mbali."
"No multicellular organisms?" Tai asked.
"There doesn't appear to be any, though we would have to send a probe to the ocean floor and look around some more." Tekoha pointed to the round rock in the tidal flat which he had just investigated. "There is some rudimentary colonialism. That thing is similar to Earth's stromatolites. The microbes are photoautotrophs." He approached the edge of the steaming water hole and pointed to the swirling colors at the edge. "But these are hyperthermophiles. The water is ninety degrees Celsius, and I don't think they could survive at temperatures much below that, based on the structure of their proteins."
"Photosynthetic?"
Tekoha shook his head. "They're chemoautotrophs. Very different from what I found in the sea-water."
"We should radio Mbali and report," Tangaroa said.
"And then Fai-tsiri would immediately dismiss this planet, as she did with Cold Trove," Tekoha said. "I think we should gather as much information as possible first and present it as part of a coherent argument. We need to be ready to counter her objections."
Tangaroa nodded, and the others followed suit by turning to their instrument displays again.
Tai stood and watched them gathering data for a minute. Ryder remained where he was, making notes in his arm-calc. Tai raised his hands. "May I have everyone's attention for a minute? I want to say something briefly." They all turned to look at him, and he lowered his hands. "I know everyone is anxious about finding refuge, but I just want us to take a step back for a moment and recognize the significance of this moment--this water, this sea, this world. This life ..." he gestured to the ruddy efflorescences. "... our lives--it all means something; in the vast, dark tome of human history, it is a bright star." He looked at Ryder, whose arms seemed frozen in mid-motion.
"The fact something like this exists is not surprising," Tai continued. "But the fact we found it is. An oasis in a sterile void with an immensity beyond human apprehension--that is something. That is something," he repeated, nodding. "We should all be honored, humbly, that we are here to witness it." He lowered his voice to just above a whisper. "We are here." He walked over to Tekoha's instrument package. "That is all." The others slowly got back to work.
Tekoha pressed a button on a tall box, and a mechanical arm lowered a pipette into the hot spring.
"What are you doing?" Tai asked him.
"Getting a sample to bring back to my lab."
"But there are microbes in that water."
"Yeah, that's whole idea, isn't it?"
"Well I think the idea is bad."
Tekoha looked at him. "I agreed with every word of your speech. But as you know, just being here and looking at the pretty colors isn't enough. We need to do actual science, and for that I need my lab equipment, and I need time. How is that a bad thing?"
"In my medical opinion, it poses too much of a risk to the crew."
"But as I said, these organisms don't share our monomers, let alone polymers. Both they and their viruses cannot make use of our cellular machinery, and they cannot metabolize any of our compounds."
"True, but can you absolutely guarantee they don't have any toxins, in their membranes or cytoplasm, which interferes with Terran metabolism?"
"Well ..."
"Of course you can't. If you knew every single compound associated with them, you wouldn't need to study them in your lab, would you?"
"You're being ridiculous. We have safety procedures. And these things can't grow outside of near-boiling water. Even the human body is like an arctic wasteland to them."
"I've given you my expert medical opinion, which overrides all others. Do I need to bring Zhao into this?"
Tekoha drew himself up close to the doctor, his face invisible behind the reflective surface, though Tai could hear heavy breathing. "If you think it's too dangerous to take up small sample encased in a biohazard container, how do you expect humans to live here, drinking the water and breathing the air?" Tekoha took a step back. "You're not going to be on my side, are you? You're going to argue to Mbali that we should move on."
"I'm sorry, I wish we could stay. But as Ariki said, Planetary Protection Policy is clear. There's no getting around it."
"We'll see about that. Desperate times call for desperate measures." Tekoha went back to his instruments.
Tai walked over to Tangaroa and watched him work. Mbali radioed them about twenty minutes later.
"Why have you taken so long to report?" she asked brusquely.
"Ma'am, everything is fine," Zhong said. "The team is still working."
"You should know by now whether this planet has the habitability markers," Mbali radioed back.
"Ma'am, there have been some minor complications," Tekoha said. "We're trying to sort them out now."
"Transmit the data from your toolkits," Mbali said.
"If we do that now, it may give you the wrong impression. I would prefer to personally present our results to you so you can get the correct interpretation."
"What do you mean by 'give me the wrong impression'? Do you take me for some kind of idiot, Tekoha?"
"Oh no ma'am. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply anything like that. I'm not good with words, you know. I actually had Fai-tsiri's decision algorithms in mind, not you."
There was brief silence before Mbali spoke again. "Fine. Then get up here now. We don't have all century."
"Acknowledged. Stowing equipment and preparing for lift-off."
Ryder walked over and stood next to Tai whilst the others folded their expanded instruments back into small toolkits and carried them to the Kea's bulk elevator.
"You're not helping them prepare," Ryder said to Tai.
"I wouldn't know what to do," Tai said. "Each toolkit is specific to one's own discipline."
"And as a medical doctor, what did you come down here to do? Is there a health hazard you expected here but not on the previous two landings?"
"No. I just wanted to get off the ship and stand in real gravity, to see one of these exoplanets with my own eyes." They were silent a moment.
"Well, enjoy your last few minutes," Ryder said. "It will be the last time you see this place." He walked away to the Kea and joined the others on the elevator. The skiff pulled them in, closing all hatches, and fired its lift-off engines. Tai stood unmoving, watching it slowly rise into the sky. When the skiff was out of sight, he walked over to a rock and sat down, looking out over the calm sea. The sun moved perceptibly as he watched, reddening and dimming in the blue-green sky. The star seemed to flare as it hit the horizon, and his eyes watered. The steam columns were nearly vertical now, and their textures seemed more intricate in the revelatory light. Then the sun was gone, and the horizon bloomed a bright orange, the sea returning to a deep green.
Five minutes later, Tai got up and walked slowly to the Tawaki. He walked below stars, amongst white columns of steam and the dark circles below them. He got into his skiff, and the petals folded down around him.
"Vocal input. Lift-off and match Unbounded inertial frame. Standard Tawaki-dock," Tai said.
"Yes, Doctor Tai. Estimated time to dock with Unbounded: twelve minutes," the skiff's computer said. The harness slithered around and secured him tightly to the chair, which rotated back ninety-degrees for the take-off position.
Tai rotated a trackball on the chair's arm to change the view from the projected wrap-around false window. He settled on a view which looked below towards the ground, but then tilted it up so that he could also see the horizon, which now glowed a deep blue. The ground became totally black, so he rotated his view forward. Unbounded appeared as a speck of reflected sunlight in the darkening sky. Tai's path curved more tightly as he approached Unbounded's inertial frame: brown planet and black sky rotated around him, accelerating until he could not see the difference between the two. Simultaneously, surface detail on the Unbounded resolved: streaks shortened, blurred patterns focused to sharpness. A hole opened; docking rails extended; the skiff was clamped and pulled. The eye-mauling reflections from the spinship's hull winked out, and Tai was submerged in red light. There was no vibration from the closing outer door, but he did hear the hiss of pressurization. The lights gradually shifted their spectrum to the artificial sunlight interior standard.
Tai climbed down from the unfolding skiff and walked across the bay. Senior staff call lights pulsed behind the ladder as he climbed towards the axis. He pulled himself up and over to the habitat ring, following the lights. When he arrived at the conference room in Command Sector, it was already full with senior staff as well as several technicians. Hemi was pacing near the wall, then suddenly grabbed a seat. Tai took his place near the head of the table as Mbali walked in. Others who were still standing also sat; everyone looked at her and waited as she lowered herself into a high-backed chair.
"This world is habitable," she said loudly. "Strategic deposition of photosynthetic algae could raise atmospheric oxygen to Earth levels in a few megayears, and we should be able to survive in surface habitats. I'm not going to discuss the geomagnetic field, tectonics, and every other habitability parameter. Because one fact overrides all others. This planet is already inhabited, and Planetary Protection Policy comes into effect." She paused.
"Are you referring to the pond scum in the hot springs?" Tekoha asked. "They're hyperthermophiles. And the microbes in the seawater are based on opposite chirality. They don't even use most of the amino acids we use, and their nucleotides are different. We could survive on the planet together as parallel, independent biospheres."
Mbali looked away from him when he was done speaking. "Since this is an important scientific discovery, I recommend the deployment of an autonomous mobile lab on the surface," she said. "A relay satellite could transmit its data to us for many years before we move out of range."
"Wait a second, did you hear what I just said?" Tekoha asked.
"Mbali, Tekoha might be right," Anaru said. "Surely the Protection Policy does not apply in this case. It was meant to prevent the unintended genocide of biospheres by the secondary effects of colonization. And I believe the lawmakers did not imagine a crew in so desperate a situation."
"Your beliefs are irrelevant, Anaru," Mbali said. "And yes, the Policy does apply in all cases, otherwise it would be a suggestion, not a law. I do not buy the 'parallel biospheres' argument. Those parallel spheres will cross at some point, at least in competition for raw materials. Our activity would alter the atmosphere and soil, and would influence the course of evolution on that planet. In theory, our very presence could prevent the emergence of higher life on that world. We can't take that risk."
"Hypothetical future higher life, by which I assume you mean multicellular animals and their possible civilizations, do not exist yet. We do," Tekoha said.
"I shall not be drawn into ethical arguments with you," Mbali said. "The designers of this mission already worked out the dangers of potential genocide and ecocide long before we launched. And Fai-tsiri has already made her decision. Our mission is to settle a habitable but uninhabited world, and that is what we shall do. We leave orbit tomorrow."
Tekoha slammed a fist on the table. "If you're going to condemn us to death, at least have our lives mean something. Give us a few more days at this world to explore it--to investigate the greatest discovery in human history and transmit our data back to Earth. Then we shall have accomplished something before we died."
"That may give your life meaning, but what about mine?" Ryder said. "What about the other four thousand people in stasis? Don't we owe them our best possible effort to save them?"
"That's not the issue here," Tekoha answered. "A few days won't make a difference."
"How do you know that? A few days can certainly make a difference for radiation poisoning."
"Our whole purpose here is to expand our frontier of knowledge for the further enlightenment of humanity. This is a vessel of exploration. Do y--"
"Is it really?" Ryder asked. "Can you name me one vessel, one expedition in human history, launched for sake of science?"
"Of cour--"
"For the sake of science alone? The pure intention of expanding knowledge? There aren't any. Not a one! Every endeavor in the name of science has had other motivations: competition amongst nations, economic expansion, communication, tourism, medical windfalls, pure monetary profit, assertions of self-superiority, population pressure, on and on. Scientists are a rare breed, Tekoha. Most people aren't like you. They don't care about the things you do. They just want to survive and live comfortably--the how or why of things do not concern them. Does anyone here know what actual benefit Mission Control expects to obtain? If you think it's knowledge, you're naive. What is Mission Control's real mission?"
"Mr. Kask," Mbali interrupted. "That's enough. You're dismissed."
"But I was defending your--"
"Get out of my meeting!" Mbali pointed to the door. She watched him leave, then looked around at the others, who were now avoiding eye contact. "I know some of you are unhappy about the situation; I am too. I suppose that's an understatement. But we all knew how things might go when we signed on. It's not going smoothly, but it's not disastrous either. Paranoid rantings of Ryder Kask aside, this mission is concerned with pure science. But everyone of sound mind here knows the health and safety of the crew are of top priority. That needs to be attended to first, before anything else." Hemi was nodding to this statement. Mbali looked at Tai. "Doctor? Do you have anything?" Mbali asked.
Tai straightened his posture. "I've had some encouraging results from my experiments with Deinococcus radiodurans. That's a microbe which can withstand radiation levels of fifteen kilograys, which is three thousand times the lethal dose for humans. My original idea was to develop a gene therapy for us which would alter our DNA repair system to mimic that of radiodurans. It looks like I shall be able to that."
"This is great news, right?" Mbali asked hesitantly.
"Sort of. I fear even that will not be enough. Our ship is a small, closed system. We can't get the non-decayed isotopes from the environment, the way an organism can on a planet. What we have is it--especially whilst in stasis, those atoms are not being replaced in the body, and the effects of internal radioactive decay build up."
"What about getting fresh material from planets or asteroids after ship deceleration periods?" Ariki asked.
"Of course that must be a part of the solution," Tai said. "But it won't be enough in the long run, I fear. The cryostats aren't engineered to be used longer than twelve to fifteen centuries, additively."
"Then it sounds like we really need to re-engineer the system. We need another mechanism to flush our bodies of radioactive waste whilst we're in stasis."
"If you can figure out how to do that without breaking the stasis cycle, I'm all for it," Tai said to Ariki. "Though I don't see how it would be physically possible, since all atoms are locked in place during the static state."
"Maybe you should work on that together," Mbali said. Tai shrugged and Ariki nodded in agreement. "Then I think we have covered the agenda. We depart this world tomorrow at 08:00. Until then, I'd like you two to work on your stasis modification, as well as the gene therapy. Tekoha, you can be in charge of dropping the auto-lab to the surface and setting up the com-sat. Dismissed."
Everyone stood and filtered out into the corridor. Tai exited and then stood near the bulkhead, watching people come out. Hemi walked heavily, wearing a deep frown. Tai approached him.
"Hemi. Are you feeling alright?" he asked.
"What's it to you?"
"I am the ship's doctor. It's my responsibility to maintain everyone's health."
"Do I look unhealthy to you?" He drew himself up and expanded his thorax. When Tai did not answer immediately, Hemi said: "You just checked me when I came out of stasis. I was fine then, wasn't I?"
Tai nodded. "Though I noticed you were different, somehow."
"You are really starting to annoy me. If I start vomiting blood, you might have cause for concern. Until then, stay away from me." He stomped off up the corridor.
Tai went in the other direction, following Ihaia. He caught up to him. "Have you noticed anything odd about Hemi?"
Ihaia stopped walking and moved to the side. "What do you mean?"
"He seems different from the last mission segment. More angry, audacious."
"When did you first notice this?"
"Ah, the beginning of this segment, during my post-stasis examination of him."
"He's always been a bit of a loud-mouth, hasn't he?"
"I'm not sure, but this time he's different."
Ihaia shrugged. "I'm sure it's nothing. We're all under a little more stress every mission segment." He continued up the corridor.
"Really? You agree with me, don't you?"
"Thank you for raising your concerns with me," Ihaia responded forcefully. "You may return to the med bay."
Tai grabbed his upper arm. "Don't shut me out. It's too late. Ever since you had me do the postmortem on Nikau, I have already been part of the investigation."
"Fine. Let me talk to Zhao Zhong a moment." They walked swiftly until catching up to Zhong. Ihaia got his attention and gestured to Tai to stay back. He spoke to Zhong in a hushed voice next to the bulkhead for a minute. They nodded to each other and came back towards Tai, then walked past him. He followed.
Zhong knocked on Hemi's cabin door.
"Enter," Hemi said, and they entered. "What now? I'm busy." He faced a wall display covered with engineering schematics.
"We know," Zhong said.
"Know what?"
"It was you."
"What was I?"
Zhong slowly pulled a telescoping stun baton from his belt. "It is very dangerous for you to play with me now."
Hemi scoffed. "You're confused. You don't know what you're talking about." As he finished his sentence, and without changing the tone of his voice, his hand darted for the underside of a nearby desk.
But Zhong was faster. His baton telescoped out horizontally in a thin black line and impacted Hemi in the side. He screamed, his flank glowing under the impact. When Zhong released the stunner, Hemi collapsed. Ihaia rushed over to him and secured his hands behind his back with shape-memory plastic handcuffs, which solidified once in position around the wrists. Ihaia hauled him up and brought him towards the door.
"You bastard," Hemi said, drooling slightly and glowering at Zhong through drooping eyelids. "You dis--"
Zhong punched him in the stomach before he could finish. "You are under arrest by authority of Unbounded Security. All ship-board rights have been revoked, and you will only speak when asked a question, and your words will be truth." He went over to Hemi's desk and squatted, looking at the underside. He reached up and removed a thin, silvery box from underneath, then stood and went back to them.
"What is it?" Tai asked.
"Looks like a simple radio transmitter of some kind. Perhaps he was trying to signal someone." Zhong and Ihaia each took one of Hemi's arms, and Tai opened the door for them. They went out of the cabin, Tai following behind. They pulled him along to Command Sector. The sector was largely empty, but a few crewmen stared whilst they scraped through. As the four entered the executive's office, Mbali spun to face them.
"Mbali, we have made an arrest. Hemi is now the prime suspect in Nikau's death," Zhong said.
"And what's he doing here?" she asked, indicating Tai.
"He identified Hemi as a person of interest."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"Doctor Tai is monitoring the suspect's health after having been stunned. We found a small radio transmitter under Hemi's desk. He was about to use it when he realized we were going to take him into custody," Zhong said.
She looked at Hemi. "Well? Did you do it?"
Hemi scowled at her, unblinking.
"Let me put it this way," she said. "Do you deny killing Nikau?"
Hemi did not respond, but Mbali seemed to look deeper into his countenance.
She nodded as if he had answered. "Put him into the nearest airlock."
"Stop!" Hemi yelled. "Don't you need to know why?"
"I don't care why. Murder can never be justified. Whatever reasons you had must have been insufficient."
Zhong and Ihaia pulled him back towards the door. "You can't do this! I was just following orders!" Hemi shouted.
"Wait," Mbali said to Zhong. She drew closer to Hemi. "That's impossible. I am the ranking executive. Only I can relay orders to the crew."
Hemi relaxed his mouth in what could have been a vague smile. "That's not exactly true," he said slowly. She waited, but he said nothing more.
"Secure the prisoner there," Mbali ordered.
Zhong and Ihaia handcuffed him to a steel grab-bar on the wall.
Mbali went from her desk to the round door with the red script. "Wait for me here." She went through, and the door closed behind her.
About ten minutes later, Mbali emerged from the dim chamber and approached the four men on the other side of her office. Tai stood near the door, silently watching. Zhong and Ihaia flanked Hemi, who was staring at his feet. He looked up and met Mbali's eyes as she drew close to him. Her face approached his, and she stared into his eyes expressionlessly.
"Hemi," she said, "I am releasing you." She reached out to him slowly. And then hands were around his head, and she jerked her arms powerfully. Hemi's neck snapped.
Mbali returned to her desk. She swept her hand across a glowing glyph, unfolding it to an open position. "All hear this. All hear this. This is your executive, Mbali speaking. Some of you may be aware, your crewmate Nikau has not been with you this mission segment. This is because he died at the end of the previous segment under suspicious circumstances. There has been an investigation, which is now concluded. It was discovered your crewmate Hemi murdered Nikau in a personal dispute. Hemi was apprehended for the crime. Whilst being questioned, Hemi made an attempt on my life, and unfortunately, security had no choice but to terminate him. I would like to thank the efficient services of our security staff in helping us through this troubling matter. There is no further danger to the crew. That is all." She swept the glyph shut and looked up. The three men were staring at her, wide eyed.
She pointed to Hemi's body, dangling by its wrists. "Get rid of that."