Wildcatter (7 page)

Seth called for animation, and was shown a few hours’ rotation: a slow twist, then flip back, slow twist, flip back. Clearly the ship was approaching more or less along the ecliptic plane, aimed for about halfway between the planet’s equator and the sunlit pole. Yes, there was ice at the equator. Some of that white might even be sea ice, which would make seasonal migration difficult for marine life.

“Latest estimate of the atmosphere?”

—
Oxygen between sixteen and eighteen percent, balance nitrogen, neon, and water vapor. Sea level pressure estimated 1.7 atmospheres.

“Carbon dioxide?”

—Too small to measure at this range. Temperatures indicate it cannot be much higher than terrestrial, but there will be some, because there is chlorophyll.

His body could handle that air as long as he was allowed enough time to depressurize afterward. The oxygen content was lower than Earth standard, but that would actually be a blessing, because the partial pressure would be higher than terrestrial. If he had to, he could dispense with the EVA suit and just breathe through a filter mask to eliminate toxic dust and airborne biohazards.

Tiring of the endlessly repeated twist-flip, he called for a current view of the terminator at highest practical magnifi­cation. Like a view of the moon at the half, this gave him a sense of three dimensions, the mountains’ relief being exposed by their shadows. The topography was Earth-like, suggesting plate tectonics, and that boded well for mineral distribution, soil fertility, and the development of life.

“Anything else unusual?”

The disk became an irregular, grainy detail. There was a coast, and an obvious river, and…

—We caught this by chance with our high-magnification scanner, and have not yet established a paradigm for the unusual texture
.
On Earth it would satisfy our parameters for provisional identification as a city seen in low-angle lighting, but there is too much vegetation to be sure at this distance and in this context.

Seth slumped back on his chair.
A city?
He was hallucinating, surely.

The rules for first contact overrode everything else, although they had never been applied in practice. Prospecting must cease at once. There must be no communication of any kind, only immediate withdrawal, leaving a beacon where the natives could not detect it. Events must be reported to ISLA, which would compensate the expedition for any financial sacrifice incurred, with a bonus. Plus historical fame to match Columbus’s, of course.

“What color beacon for a sentient species?”

—Purple.

Made no sense! “And Galactic’s is…?”

—Yellow, Prospector, still yellow.

“Holograph dismissed. Down on the floor, monster!” Seth rose and headed for the galley to flip some pseudo-eggs. The cat ran hopefully before him. He must be patient. In a couple of days everything would be clear. It couldn’t be a city, just a trick rock formation. Evidence for intelligent aliens would certainly have sent the Galactic team high-tailing home to Earth with the news, but they would have posted purple, not yellow. He wasn’t going to mention the shadows to the others. Let them find out for themselves.

But all that oxygen and blue water? Damn the little green men! Cacafuego was just too hot to pass up. The odds were very high now that in just a few days, Prospector Seth and Astrobiologist Reese would climb into the shuttle and go downside to that strange sideways world.

* * *

After his usual solitary breakfast, he went back to the showers. He had just found his shaver when Jordan wandered in behind him, and for a moment their eyes met in the mirror. She had cleaned off the smudged makeup and brushed out the short golden hair, but she was topless. That was not unusual aboard
Golden Hind
and he was quite accustomed to seeing her naked in a cabin, a sight that never palled, but even semi-nudity seemed wrong under their present circumstances. She started at the sight of him and stepped quickly into a toilet cubicle. He went to the clothes bins, rummaged for top and shorts in her color, blue, and tossed them over the door to her. Then he went back to shaving.

When he was rich he would have his mess of a face tidied up. His nose had once been straight, his cheek had fallen in where he had lost four teeth to a lucky punch, and the too-recent scar on his forehead had come from a broken bottle. The wonder was not that he had only scored two out of four on the ship, but that such an ugly thug ever scored at all.

He had just reached the sandpaper on his chin when Jordan emerged, decently clad. No doubt she had started the change pills already, but no results would be showing yet. She was still a boyish woman with small breasts and narrow hips, but she excited him more than the voluptuous Maria ever did. He knew every pore in Jordan’s skin intimately, the pink nipples and aureoles, faint pubic hair almost invisible against her pale skin. He hated the thought of those breasts shrinking even more, the slightly enlarged herm clitoris swelling into a workable penis.

He turned to face her as she came closer. Not too close, though.

“I screwed up tonight,” she said.

Of course she had. The captain’s job was to inspire the crew, which Jordan did with good humor and fine people management skills. Unlike Reese or JC, they phrased every order as a request and never pulled rank on the lowly gofer. The whole crew liked them, but no one doubted that JC had chosen Jordan Spears because they avoided confrontation. Unfortunately a face-off was sometimes necessary, and tonight the herm had blinked.

“No, you didn’t,” he said.

“Yes, I did. I should not be changing over.”

He shrugged. “You made the right decision, love … ma’am, I mean. No one knows more about fighting than me, and you never go into a fight with a monkey on your back. If you feel happier tackling Old Ugly as male, then you are quite right to change over.”

“But it’s a retreat, and he’ll know it. Damn it, he can’t overrule me! He can’t even overrule
you
, if you have good cause to refuse to go downside. I can handle that big ape without having to grow a cock. It’s not fair to the others: you, Reese, Maria.”

“Is he sane?”

Sidetracked, Jordan stared at him for a moment. “Be more specific.”

“A trillionaire, sixty-two years old. What’s he doing out here in the Big Nothing? Escaping from too many ex-wives?”

“Looking for the Great One, the world-shaking triumph to crown his career.”

“And if he fails, he’s busted. Loses everything. I worry a little about that.” Was that true? Was JC sane?

“You could handle him if he turned violent,” she said. “You’re a fighter, an ex-bouncer. He’s big but he’s three times your age.”

“The first time we met you told me I was the best applicant and yet you’d been frightened he wouldn’t accept me. That why? You thought he would red-pencil me because I could take him down?”

Jordan shrugged and put on her professional calming smile. “JC’s not the type to go berserk, Seth. ISLA tests everyone for that.”

“You’re not the type to buckle under when a fat old bully shouts at you. Galactic’s not the type to run away from danger. I sure as hell aren’t, either. But I like to cover the bases. Let’s talk about firearms.”

Jordan nodded quickly, as if she’d expected the question. “All according to GenRegs. I have a stun gun coded for captain’s use only. In the shuttle you have one plus a blazer, neither of which will work inside the ship.”

“And JC Lecanard supervised the building of the ship. Don’t tell me he didn’t add a few little secrets. That champagne he produced last night wasn’t in the manifest. Where’s he got the guns hidden? Have you looked? Control tells me there aren’t any.”

“It tells me the same.”

“But?” He knew her well enough to know that there was more.

Her smile was thin. “There’s a table in his stateroom with a thick top but no drawer in it—wasted space. I can’t find a hidden catch.”

Seth desperately wanted to hug her. “Thank you … ma’am.” JC’s big cabin was the one place he had never been inside and could never enter. All the others had, but the door wouldn’t open for him. “Ask Hanna to take a look, mm?”

“I already did, love. Says she can’t find anything either.” Jordan spun around and walked away. She turned at the door. “I did make a mistake tonight. To reverse it now would make it worse. I’m sorry, lover, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. You are by far the best stud aboard, you know.”

That wasn’t much of a compliment when his competition was two herms and a man forty years his senior.

* * *

By the time the crew trooped in for a breakfast, Seth had shaved and showered and dressed. Shorts and tops were color-coded, and his were green. The others were still looking more than a shade under last night’s weather but too excited to sleep longer. Instead of eating in the mess, they carried their food into the control room to listen to Control’s commentary and stare at the holographs while they ate. Maria guessed at the odd axial tilt the moment she saw the cloud patterns, which were all wrong. Much jabber about sideways worlds followed. Apparently several planets with freaky axial tilts had turned out to be profitable, Lorraine especially.

Seth’s excitement was back. Now he could admit that there was fear mixed in with it, but it was the thrill-fear he knew before fights, and it felt good. Having already eaten, he wandered around with the coffee pot, just listening to the chatter. Even old space hands JC and Reese were bubbling. Jordan seemed to have forgotten their worries for the time being.

He knew them all well by now and respected most of them very much. JC, Jordan, and Hanna were superlatively good at what they had contributed so far. JC was still a bully and insecure enough to demand formal respect, but he had done an incredible job in organizing the expedition, sneaking advance notice of the hot prospect, and ramming through the preparations in time to use it. He had even been shrewd enough to buy the Armada license as a secondary target, and few entrepreneurs would have managed to talk hard-bitten backers into that. Seth knew Jordan better than he had ever known anyone, and if it were possible to think of marriage to a herm, he would be dreaming of that now.

Hanna? Hanna was a brilliant navigator. She had a temper, but would always apologize ten minutes after losing it, and she had a needle-sharp wit. The other two had not had a chance to apply their skills yet. Maria he liked very much, and Reese he detested.

As a bed partner Maria demanded a lot of work and took sex too seriously. She was a fireball when she got going, after all the babble about respect and commitments. And yet, for sheer animal fun, Jordan beat her hands down. Random sex in so small a group should have triggered mayhem, but Jordan’s skill and training kept them all one reasonably happy family.

Reese, the biologist, was the proof that every family tree has its sap. They were as snobbish as JC and as waspish as an August picnic. They were hypocritical, too. When male, he expected sexual favors, when female she refused to give them, at least to Seth, although JC claimed to have bedded her.

JC laid down his fork and put the planetologist on the spot. “Maria? Obviously there is life on Cacafuego. Nothing else could put that much oxygen in the atmosphere. So what can possibly have inspired Galactic to declare it dangerous and post a yellow beacon?”

She stabbed at him with eyes dark and dangerous as obsidian daggers.

“Radioactivity?” she said. “Cacafuego is abnormally dense, the second densest planet ever recorded. The core is denser than iron, meaning it must contain siderophile elements.”

“You saying Cacafuego has a heart of gold?” Hanna inquired mildly.

“Gold is only one element that combines easily with iron. I was thinking of high-weight radioactive elements. If the core is rich in those, then we may expect to find such material in the crust also, exuding radon gas into the atmosphere, making it toxic to terrestrial life. Or the stellar neighborhood may be dangerous—there’s an unpredictable Wolf-Rayet star within a parsec. Or the element mix at the surface may be non-standard: arsenic, cadmium are both toxic and carcinogenic, to name two. There are too many wolves in the forest to start speculating now, Commodore.”

JC sank back, muttering that none of those factors would endanger a very brief visit. Given half a chance he might start retelling his story of the man-eating mushrooms found by
Goede Hoop
. “Reese? Any theories?”

At times the biologist seemed to hold the commodore in almost as much contempt as he did Seth. “Far too many. I could list a hundred factors that can create biological problems on a life-rich world. We don’t have a canary with us. That’s what prospectors are for.”

Very funny!
No one smiled.

Reese’s sullen grumpiness suggested he was apprehensive—that was a snob word for scared. If Seth agreed to brave the killer planet, the astrobiologist should go with him. Failure to do so might void their contract. Or possibly Reese had decided to change gender and was already having changeover pains, for shrinking a penis by drug-induced apoptosis was no mean ordeal. Why would they do that now? Then Seth saw that JC might find it harder to order a woman into danger than a man. A sneaky cop-out, but only to be expected of Reese Platte.