Outward Borne (30 page)

MaxNi9 closed the office door and
slumped onto his cushion. He was going to support YuLon's proposal
to launch a mission to planet Kalekto and he did not want to deal
with any more talk on that subject until he had to. MaxNi9 himself
was an ardent supporter of intervention. The long period that had
been spent building new, sustainable habitats had cultivated his
desire for a meaningful plan in which the Outward crew could
participate in preserving their aliens lives and cultures. He
wanted to begin helping species survive within the galaxy, simple
as that. The Outward had demonstrated, time and again, how rare and
fragile technologically advanced civilizations actually were. Now
they should do something about it.

But MaxNi9 was getting old,
already fifty-five years as Captain. He did not have the energy
that he once had and conflict was just not part of his plan. He was
trying hard not to think about that evening's follow-on meeting
when AlAnni tapped on his door and walked in. He wanted to bark at
her about inappropriate behavior, but it would do no good with
AlAnni. Anyway, her perpetually pleasant self launched into the
latest information on Kalekto. New atmospheric data was coming in
rapidly as the planet had recently emerged from the gas giant that
had hidden her from Outward's view. Kalekto orbited an old mainline
star that was far from a prime candidate. Stars that ancient rarely
had planets with significant life forms, but now AlAnni was
rattling on about halocarbons and high molecular weight
hydrocarbons in the upper atmosphere, both indicators of advanced
industrial activity. Old Kalekto was too good to pass up, abundant
life seemed very probable, and even some hint of an advanced
civilization had to be followed up. At least that was MaxNi9’s
view, even if he had to rush a course change and launch to do
it.

He asked AlAnni to hold off on the
news and sit down for a chat. MaxNi9 liked AlAnni, not in a
particularly romantic way, but he was comfortable with her around,
even in this messy room. He was content to sit back and let AlAnni
talk on. Her high spirits were contagious and MaxNi9 would welcome
that disease. He ignored his event monitor when the notice of
tomorrow’s all-hands meeting showed up.

MaxNi9 kept his interventionist
views to himself, as he thought fit for his position. Nevertheless,
he would support the Kalekto mission. He believed that finding new
civilizations was as much a part of a proper interventionist role
as helping to preserve already known species throughout the galaxy.
Strident insistence on one side produced unwise resistance on the
other, it was always such with politics, he thought, the worst of
both sides. The ObLaDas had not found many truly advanced species,
even thirty-seven hundred years into the Outward Voyager mission.
The planet Kalekto was showing strong signs of an industrial
civilization, even though no electromagnetic communications had yet
been intercepted, and the ratios of synthetic atmospheric compounds
were a bit odd. Still, they have not had so many good signs this
distance from a planet in a long time.

MaxNi9 announced his decision.
There was some obvious dissent. It would have gotten contentious,
but he didn't stop for questions; instead he turned the meeting
over to Jon GeoMon to start the planning brief. The Outlook Voyager
would launch a long-range probe as soon as it could be made ready.
They would pursue a course change for a wide star-rounding
trajectory, so they should all make ready for that. Jon would
manage the Kalekto landing assembly, his first of course. The
ObLaDas had not undertaken a planetary probe since the
refurbishment program began centuries ago.

The interventionists grew more
determined and pressed hard to replace the Voyager’s old traditions
with their new activist plans. To them, and MaxNi9 as well, the
Voyager mission had amply demonstrated that technically advanced
civilizations were extremely rare and those that did exist were
often in a fragile state. Their precarious existence was too
valuable to be allowed to die out, they claimed. Some type of
intervention should be attempted and the Outward Voyager should
commit itself to help these alien beings avoid the potential
self-destruction of their species or their civilization. To them,
MaxNi9's support for the Kalekto project was a puzzling and
disappointing surprise.

Jon GeoMon developed the launch
strategy for the Kalekto mission. The sequence would start in
twenty-four weeks. An advance probe will accelerate ahead of the
Voyager and is expected to provide two hundred and sixteen hours of
orbit level survey data before the lander assembly would receive
its final programs and be launched. This mission would require an
excessive amount of work. All of the necessary equipment and
operational procedures would need be recreated or built anew and
put into place. None of the living ObLaDas had ever conducted a
planetary probe, it had been that long, and the full cooperation of
everyone was essential.

Shortly after the advance probe
entered orbit, it began sending clear evidence of large
interconnected, but apparently deserted cities. High-altitude
images of Kalekto’s surface showed several areas that had been laid
out in irregular grids that were characteristic of deliberately
planned communities. Three-dimensional images suggested that there
were parts of some buildings still standing. Connecting roads led
between the sites. The planet had apparently been home to a large
population and an organized society, but none of the sites were
currently occupied. The Kalektians must have had knowledge of basic
mathematics to have lived in such well-planned communities, and may
have achieved much in the way of technology, but somehow it had
been lost it in recent generations.

Even so, there was some
intelligent life on Kalekto. Scattered light and heat signals were
found during dark-side surveys. It almost certainly indicated the
presence of the city-people survivors, although they now appeared
to live in small, scattered settlements with a much-reduced
population. Jon GeoMon and his team warmed to the mission. The
opportunity to contact new beings created an excitement that
superseded the political debates on the Voyager, at least
temporarily.

When the lander assembly arrived
in orbit, survey gliders were sent to investigate a high plateau
that housed four inhabited villages. The land was mostly brown,
although there were widespread, somewhat varied forests, and widely
dispersed patches of faded-green ground cover. The planet
apparently never developed grass-like plants. There was little wind
over the hot, dry plain that day.

The lander set
down on a broad plane in a spot midway between two widely separated
villages. More gliders and flybots were sent out to survey life
forms across the planet and to enter the inhabited villages.
The open, rolling terrain, with its scattered
dark plants, made it easy detect the larger animals that lived on
its surface, except there were not many to be found. Kalekto
supported only small numbers of animals and very few species. This
bit of news caught the attention of Jon’s controller staff. It was
quite at odds with the experience they had gained from previous
ObLaDa studies of hundreds of inhabited planets. Wherever life
existed, species evolve to fit the niches that are available and
then expand their population to make it a tight fit. On Kalekto,
however, there were very few grazing animals on the vast plains and
no predators were found. The lakes and ponds were almost devoid of
plant-eating life forms, even though they were choked with
vegetation. A closer look at the animals that were wandering around
was disconcerting. Most individuals were thin or outright sickly,
and too many appeared to be young, or at least immature. Jon GeoMon
passed along the first of what was to be a long series of warnings
to Captain MaxNi9.

However alarming the surrounding
fauna might be, there was definitely an organized, seemingly
intelligent species on the planet. Their villages, thought small,
were carefully laid out and their fires were clearly visible in the
purple-black night. As morning broke, the flybots were sent out to
probe each of the nearby villages. They were not so very far apart,
perhaps two to three days travel for the inhabitants, but there was
no sign of any connecting roads, or even paths, nor were there any
travelers moving from one town to another.

Jon GeoMon positioned some of the
flybots on a hill overlooking the smallest village. These were
good-sized robots, about half the size of the Kalektians, so they
would be noticed as when they entered the towns. MaxNi9 wanted Jon
GeoMon to anticipate a hostile reaction and use the microbots for
first contact, as these were not so very threatening, but Kalekto
was too large a planet and distances too great for the little guys.
Scouts, lookouts, and diversions were all set up in case of a
hostile reception, but they needn't have bothered. The Kalektians
just stopped and looked when the flybots flew through the village
streets. Lethargy and apathy reigned. Another oddity. The town of
one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five individuals was planned,
with groupings of one- and two-story buildings, a few of which had
been decorated in an effort to look nice, but most were shabby,
some little more than sheds. Some metals and other synthetic
materials were in use, but the Kalektians employed little science
or technology in their simply constructed dwellings, although they
did burn some form of coal for heat and had lamps for
light.

The flybots were soon ignored and
their surveillance continued undisturbed. The villages held no
livestock, wild animals, or pets, and there was no evidence of
hunting. The Kalektians seemed to have established a subsistence
living that was wholly vegetarian, and that avoided contact with
their own kind and all other living beings. Even with this regimen,
things were not right. Many of the Kalektians were thin or frail,
and appeared to be ill. The population was quite young and there
were many orphans amid the tribe of youngsters. Even the children
made no effort to knock the bots down or chase them away. It is
difficult to say how a newly discovered alien species should look
and act, but the ObLaDas began to suspect that these creatures had
been damaged in some way.

Jon GeoMon raised his level of
concern with Captain MaxNi9. He had become increasingly
uncomfortable about this mission. His instincts were to let those
miserable creatures be, and get off the planet. The Kalektians
were, however, clearly intelligent and had survived on that ancient
planet for billions of years, many times longer than any other
species that the ObLaDas had discovered. They were clearly an
advanced society and, while not at their peak, they had reached the
brink of a science-driven civilization. What if they were in some
distress at the moment, would it not be in the new spirit of the
Outward Voyager to fix them up? In spite of their apparent
difficulties, the Kalektians appeared to be one of the most
promising species that the ObLaDas had encountered since the
ill-fated Gracks. They were far more dangerous.

It was the ponds that bothered
MaxNi9 the most - plant-choked but free of animal life. If nothing
else, there should be something in the water eating those plants.
What happened to those things? MaxNi9 could not get past that fact.
Nevertheless, the probes had completed a visual exploration of the
rest of the planet and their early findings held true across the
land, so he decided to continue the mission and collect a
representative Kalektian population and their food
sources.

Forty-six
individuals were captured; including more of the older ones than
were represented in the population. The younger, or at least
smaller ones, were chosen for their apparent health. The robotics
picked out food samples and some promising-looking plants, but no
other animal species were captured. The collection went without
incident. The Kalektians continued to be strangely passive even as
they found themselves encased inside the gel-filled transport
containers.
Only three individuals died
during the return to the Outward, which was better than Jon
expected, given the weakened condition of most of the captives.
Still, there were some minor problems following arrival. Parts of
the Farside module were still being been rebuilt. Thus far only the
two smallest species, the short wispy LabislassLees and the lumpy
Hucs, had been moved to their Farside quarters. The space planned
for the Kalektians was mostly finished, but some work
remained.

MaxNi9 called CamBi to the command
center. As the most senior altspecies biologist, CamBi felt that
she deserved to head the team that would install and manage the
Kalekto contingent. At the same time, she expected that MaxNi9
would bypass her because of her outspoken politics and support for
the traditional ObLa mission. She was surprised, almost shocked,
when MaxNi9 gave her the post and even asked her to pick a team to
manage the newcomers. Before MaxNi9 could change his mind, she
named two of her allies, YuLon Lim, to manage the Kalekto
assimilation, and Dyn JonDar, with his experience in habitat
construction.

MaxNi9 struggled to keep from
flushing, relieved at CamBi’s answer. She had just offered to
isolate her most vocal advocates in the Farside wing. He had hoped
to arrange this separation of advocacies to keep the conflict
between the factions at a minimum. It did not take CamBi long to
suspect that she had been manipulated, but she passed over the
niggling concern, and went to contact YuLon and the taciturn Dyn
about their impending move. They joined Di DonSi, who was already
managing the robotic construction teams, and MeSo, who supervised
the maintenance of the Hucs and LabislassLees in the Farside
habitat module.