Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (5 page)

Dex shrugged hi
e
s wings, “Gone.”

Syrdian relaxed back down, “Hie must have gone for
help from
the tribe.”

Wide eyed, Dex wanted to shake Syrdian. H
i
e thought,
didn’t
you hear himr call you “dyatso” as h
i
e left you here alone
,
but for me?
Dex’s eyes narrowed. If Syrdian really couldn’t fly with the holes in hies wings sutured shut hie probably
was
dyatso. The heat of summer would be upon them soon. Migration to the
sou
th would begin
tomorrow
. Life here in the heat of summer would be impossible. Dex had
sometimes
wondered if it would be possible to live
in this area
if you moved higher on the mountain. Everyone knew it was cooler as you went up
. Harder to fly because the air was thinner but doable. But to get higher on the mountain without flying? Syrdian would have to walk through a lot of forest. Despite the fact that Qes
had
hid
den
from the talor
in the forest, the forest wasn’t safe. There were many large wingless predators in there.
Thinking of that,
Dex looked carefully over the verge to make sure one of those
large forest
predators wasn’t sizing them up from just inside the trees.
H
i
e didn’t see any large infrared objects, only the expected smaller animals.
He puffed his lips, tasting the air,
“Syrdian?
We should move farther from the verge,
”
h
i
e said. “Who knows what might be lurking there.”

Syrdian’s head rose
, turning
violently to allow himr to study the verge himrself, “Why? Do you see something?”

“No, but by the time we see it, it might be too late.”

Syrdian got to hies feet and said,
“OK, let’s move.” Hie looked at hies wing, “Hey the hole is gone!”

“I tied back the sutures Qes cut out.”

Syrdian looked at Dex, then at hies wing, then back at Dex, “You really did sew my wing up like
you do
your leatherwork?”

Dex nodded, turning to walk back to the talor. Flying back when Syrdian couldn’t seemed rude.

When they reached the talor, Syrdi
an said, “Look at all that meat!
I’m hungry!”

Dex said, “Shall we cook some?”

“Do you know how?”

Dex shrugged, “S
ur
e.
Not like they do it at the cave, but
well
enough to eat.
”

“OK,” Syrdian said, crouching
an
d
looking
expectantly
at Dex.

***

Qes
stared
d
isconsolately into the distance,
h
ow could
this
have happened to
me?
This morning he’d been on top of the world, highly ranked in the tribe,
nearly
mated to the beautiful Syrdian. Syrdian,
likely
the highest ranked among the tribe’s youth. They’d been pseudo mating for days now and
this morning
Syrdian had suggested that they sneak away to their favorite meadow
to do it again.

Now, with the beautiful Syrdian mutilated, Qes would have to find another potential mate.
A difficult task with many of the higher ranked youth
already
committed to others.

Briefly Qes wondered if there
was any way
that Syrdian could survive?
A shiver ran over hies wings,
obviously not
. Even if Syrdian somehow made it back to the cave through the forest
,
the migration would be
tomorrow
and there would be no way for Syrdian to fly south, nor
to
survive the summer heat if hie stayed here. And… if Syrdian somehow survived… Qes didn’t
want
to be mated to a mutilated, low status,
Syrdian.

Qes
dreaded hies return to the cave. When Syrdian didn’t return
dalins
would ask
Qes
if hie’d
seen himr. Especially Syrdian’s parents.
Qes
’d have to deny
seeing Syrdian
or they’d want himr to lead them to the meadow. Hie shrugged hies wings,
crueler really
,
to take them to Syrdian
and have them find himr with a mutilated wing.
Then they’d all have to come to grips with Syrdian’s eventual death.
No, better and kinder not to tell them what had happened. Let them think Syrdian had died immediately at the hands of a talor… or something else.
Better by far than seeing himr alive and having to leave himr to hies death.
Qes
didn’t have to even admit to being with Syrdian when it happened.

Hie shouldn’t return until nearly dark to eliminate the chance that they’d go out searching and find Syrdian by some unlucky chance.
A
flightless Syrdian
couldn’t possibly
be able to
survive the night, thus sparing hies parents the pain of finding Syrdian mutilated and begging for
the
help they couldn’t give.

Norris walked over to where Donsaii still sat with the others staring at a screen. “I agree except for clause 2.6 where I would want to limit that to one year as well.”

Donsaii’s eyes narrowed a moment, then she smiled, “
OK
. My AI’s recording this as a binding contract, do you agree?”

Norris shrugged, “Sure.”

“Great, look at this with us.”

Donsaii turned the screen they were looking at a little toward him and he saw an image of Earth
from space
. Although…
he tilted his head curiously…
The cloud cover was really heavy…
Could it be Venus? No he saw a swath of blue in a break in the clouds.
Norris narrowed his eyes and said, “That’s more clouds than I’ve ever seen…” He looked at the four of them and they were all grinning widely. He looked back at the screen, “What
is this
?”

Kenner
said in a hushed voice, “That’s the third planet of Tau Ceti.”

Norris stared at her, then at D
onsaii, then back at the screen. The skin prickled on his scalp,
“How?”

Emmerit said, “The girls here sent a rocket out there with a camera.”

“Oh Jeez,” Norris put a hand down on the table and leaned on it, taking an almost gasping breath. “Really? How?” He looked at the screen again, “Is that
blue
showing through the clouds?”

“Yeah, oxygen, nitrogen
,
CO
2
atmosphere
,
” Emmerit
whispered reverently.
“We’re assuming the blue is water. Initially, when
the planet
looked white from far away we thought it
must be
an ice world. It’s pretty far out at the outer edge of the ‘habitable zone’ where the temperature
should
be right for liquid water. We assumed it would be mostly frozen. There’s more CO
2
than Earth and quite a bit of methane that
may
be boosting the greenhouse effect”

“My God! There must be some kind of life to create the oxygen. What does it look like?”

Donsaii shrugged. “We don’t know. We haven’t sent anything down into the atmosphere yet. There
is
a huge green area
in the southern hemisphere
though; we’re thinking maybe some kind of ‘supercontinent’ like the original Pangaea here on Earth? Maybe the green means something like chlorophyll?”

Norris’ eyes widened
even further
, “Really?”

“Yeah, so that’s what we’ve been working on. We’re trying to design a vehicle that won’t contaminate TC3 with our organisms and vice versa. Then we can go down and have a look.”

“TC3?”

“Short for Tau Ceti Three. We don’t have a name for it yet. Here, look at this.”

The screen filled with a diagram of a rocket. Donsaii said, “We can send data back through PGR chips, so that avoids any
transfer of
organism
s
as long as we sterilize the rocket before we put it through the port to TC3. However, normally we have ports sending LOX and LNG to the main rocket motor and just plain compressed gas through ports to act as attitude jets. Now our plan is to use steam for the attitude jets
,
since
that should be sterile. At first we were thinking that the cold would kill organisms in the LOX and LNG that we use for our main rocket propellants. However, we’ve since learned that cryogenic temperatures are
actually
used to
preserve
bacteria. Now
,
microbes
should be killed in the rocket’s flame
,
but what about the little puffs of gas that leak out right before ignition? We’ve been thinking about putting something toxic in the first puffs so that it will be sterile until the flame starts but then we’d be squirting toxic stuff into the atmosphere there… And the mechanics of putting something toxic in the initial puffs are problematic.” She frowned.

Norris said, “How about using ethanol. Bacteria are killed in alcohols.”

Emmerit frowned, “That’d be good, but we’d still have bacteria in the liquid oxygen.”

“Use hydrogen peroxide as your oxidizer, bacteria die in that too.”

“So both propellants are bactericidal, but not horribly toxic and they burn to water and CO
2
.” Donsaii mused.

Norris said, “Well, they’re both kinda toxic at high concentrations.”

Ell shrugged
“No toxic exhaust at least. Great idea!” she smiled broadly at him, “
Already
glad to have you aboard.” She looked around at her little group, “Remember, we can’t use port supplied fuel cells to power the stuff on board the rocket either. We don’t want to leak bacteria through those ports either. I’m figuring that we have to keep the fuel cell here and send sterilized wire through
a hot interface into
tiny ports
in the rocket. The wires can
supply the power for the camera, PGR chips and ports. Maybe we should
start
supplying power
through wires
to all our ports, even here on Earth?”

Eyebrows rose over that idea, though Norris didn’t really understand the issue. They went back to discussing how to assemble a sterile rocket. Or a sterilizable rocket anyway. Then what instruments to put on the first rocket to descend to the surface of TC3? Norris suggested instruments to measure gravity, atmospheric composition and a DNA detection instrument.

“DNA? Surely alien life will use a different molecule for encoding genetic data?”

Norris shrugged, “One theory is that DNA in bacterial spores or viral capsids could
have
spread all around the universe on stellar winds and by
explosions of
supernova
e
. Such DNA could
have
re-evolv
ed
life on each new world.” He raised his eyebrows, “We have no idea if this
theory
is true, but now we can find out.”

Eventually
,
his world view sorely shaken,
Norris left D5R with video of TC3 and a number of samples of asteroid 2019 UB40.

As Ell walked Norris out, Emma smiled
up
at Roger. “I thought you explained things very
nicely
to Norris.”

“You did?” Roger said, trying to remember what he’d explained well. “Thanks.” He looked momentarily at Emma. She’d done something interesting with her hair. It looked like a curly tangle, but he suspected a purposeful tangle. Anyway it looked good. “Hey, you know it’s a lot of fun working with you. Too bad
you
weren’t in
Johnson’s
lab
with us
back at NCSU.”

Emma wrinkled her nose at him, “Nope, I could
never
have worked with Johnson!” She tilted her head. “Maybe it would have been OK if you’d been assigned to the Sponchesi lab…”