It took a great many years for the founders to get here, or so we
learnt in our lessons. I must admit I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should
have been as I was gazing out of the window, watching my father giving final
instructions to the very first expedition team to go outside and search the
surrounding hillsides for minerals.
‘Day-dreaming again,
David?’
I grinned at Teacher’s gentle gibe. ‘I suppose so, Teacher.’ I was
still half-thinking about the four men setting off on their dangerous task.
‘It’s strange to realise we aren’t the first people; that we’re nothing more
than a small seeding colony. Was earth really so terrible that people had to
leave?’
Teacher’s normally happy face grew a little sad as he pondered his
answer. ‘It wasn’t at first,’ he said slowly. ‘It was a beautiful place, with a
great many forms of life. You already know of some of them, but the variety was
truly astonishing. It seemed anything that could exist either did, or
had in the past. Birds filled the air and fish teemed in the seas. Animals and
plants of all shapes and sizes, from huge to microscopic, occupied every
space.’ Teacher paused for a moment, staring wistfully off into the distance.
‘And then, when it became clear we had ruined it all past the point of no
return, the seeding ships were planned and built and a few humans finally left
a world of increasing horrors.’
Most of us had heard Teacher’s tales before of course, but Jake
was just six and had only recently joined the daily learning sessions. He was
the younger son of our two farmers and sat wide-eyed as Teacher recounted the
downfall of human civilisation on earth, ending with the orgies of self-destruction
caused by ever mounting population pressures and the awful, widespread
realisation that things were only going to get worse.
The seeding ships had all left within the same year, aimed at a
number of the nearest star systems. Totally self sufficient and robotically
controlled, the ships carried their frozen cargoes across the light years to
their new homes … except there was no guarantee of actually finding a
home and it was grimly accepted that many of the ships would eventually become
lifeless, floating hulks.
Our ship had been aimed at Alpha Centauri, long argued to be a
triple star, but as we now knew, more properly a binary system. The third star,
tiny red Proxima, was hardly visible at all and was speeding out of the system
at what Teacher amusingly called ‘a rate of knots’.
The founders had named our planet Hope, but it was often wryly
joked that they should have called it Hopeless. Oh, it looked ideal when they
first awoke, seeming to have most of the things humans apparently needed. It had
an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere with all the necessary added bits like CO2,
and none of the nasties like ammonia or nitric oxide and while the O-tension
was only 18%, it was high enough for former earth-life. There was also abundant
water plus many forms of vegetation, though to date we knew of only a few which
were edible. Of course, if things hadn’t been right, then the robot ship would
never have landed and we would probably have become one of the floating hulks.
One problem with Hope is
that it revolves around Alpha Centauri A. This in itself would not be such a
bad thing. ACA, or Rigil as the Astronomer calls it, is a Sol-like star a
little older than Sol itself and easily passes all five tests for ‘human
support viability’. Technically, it’s a youngish, main-sequence, stable, G-type
star, with at least one heavy-metal-bearing planet within the life-zone. It
sounds plain enough, but the astronomer often shakes his head in wonder that a
planet like Hope actually existed in the very place humans were likely
to look first, simply because it was the closest system to earth at a mere four
light-years distance.
However, the problems with Hope begin with the fact that the
smaller star ACB itself revolves around the larger ACA. More accurately, they
revolve around each other. Luckily, ACB never gets close enough to affect the
orbit of Hope around ACA, but if it did, then Hope wouldn’t be here at all.
Teacher had told us that earth seas had tides and that earth often
had wild weather, caused by the gravitational pulls of both Sol itself and
earth’s single, but very large satellite called ‘Moon’. We don’t have any
satellites, except for the signal-drones the seeding ship had placed in orbit,
but we certainly have tides and weather, only ours can be a lot fiercer than on
earth.
We also have conditions that can vary wildly from day to day. Hope
revolves quite slowly on its axis which is inclined at a greater angle than
earth’s at thirty-one degrees, but Hope’s orbital period is a little shorter
than earth’s, so the days are long and vary widely in terms of day and night
throughout the year, while the seasons move very quickly and the year is a bit
shorter. Sometimes it can be light for days on end with the light-levels
varying markedly as well, depending upon whether yellow ACA or orange ACB
happen to be ‘up’, or both, or neither. Teacher says we haven’t been here long
enough to see everything Hope can throw at us, as ACA and ACB have a binary
rotation period of about eighty earth years, so we’re not yet a quarter of the
way through one cycle.
Although we’ve been here for eighteen years, we have yet to
encounter any large or intelligent forms of life, though there are reports of
people occasionally seeing or hearing things. There are plenty of Hope’s
versions of insects, but unfortunately, no birds other than the domestic fowl
the founders brought with them. We’ve sometimes seen animals of course; mostly
swift-footed, vicious little herbivores which seem to be increasing in numbers
from year to year, but if there are any big predators, we have yet to meet
them. Hopefully they would be stopped by the wide moat surrounding our hilltop
fortress. Teacher says there is probably abundant life in the oceans as well,
but for the present, when we need fish we take them from the breeding stocks in
the moat or the two fishponds.
Though eighteen years might sound a reasonable time, of the
seeding ship’s original complement of thirty-six, four had not awoken from
their frozen sleep. Of the remainder, five had died in the first few years, one
by accident and the others through diseases caused by dietary deficiencies. The
founders were well aware our continued existence on Hope depended upon the
establishment of a larger population as quickly as possible, which meant every
person was vital, but on the other hand, the colony was only able to grow as
fast as it could support itself. We had only recently even begun venturing
beyond the moat and then only for essential quick forays to gather fruit or
berries. The ore-hunting expedition had been forced upon us by the fact we were
rapidly running out of metal to cannibalise from the seeding ship.
Teacher explained that we could have been supplied with all manner
of marvels, like vehicles, pumps, mining equipment, automated this and
precision that. But what would we do when the tyres wore out or the batteries
went dead? For that matter, what would we use for fuel? We had limited supplies
of certain things designed to save or prolong life in dire emergencies, but
once they were gone, we were on our own. Teacher made it brutally clear that we
were essentially a small farming community, eking out a precarious existence
and if any of the founders had been told the truth about what it would really
be like, many of them might have thought more than twice before they
volunteered.
I had mused off again, wondering what lay outside our safe little
world and was pulled back to the present by the scraping of chairs and desks,
signalling the end of lessons for the day. Not that it was yet free time. Life
in the colony wasn’t easy; there was always work to do and not enough hands to
do it. Even from an early age, you quickly got used to solving your own
problems and just doing what had to be done.
We all had chores to perform, even young Jake, who as usual headed
off towards the farm to gather eggs and feed his pigs. We don’t have many
animals as those which came with the founders had to be easy to feed and keep
in small areas. Mum and Dad often mourned the fact that we had no cows, sheep
or horses, but they apparently required whole fields of grass to eat. Not only
had it been thought highly unlikely that a planet suitable for humans would
also have precisely the right sort of grass, but it would have meant having to
control huge areas immediately upon landing, so no grass eaters - or ‘obligate
herbivores’ as Teacher ponderously termed them - had been included in the
seeding-ships cargos. True; Hope had its own versions of herbivores, but we
already knew the sort of grass they ate would not have supported earth’s grazing
animals.
That type of thing also affected the humans of course. Jake’s
eggs, pigs and chickens and all the crops we grew were vital in ensuring we
stayed healthy, so our farm occupied a great deal of the available space and at
times, everybody’s energies. Teacher constantly talked about the amazing number
of minerals we needed, the four essential vitamins and the eight amino acids
and showed us nasty pictures of people suffering from scurvy or wasting away
with malnutrition.
I hurried off down the corridor to attend to my own chore. Unlike
Jake’s, mine was more technical, in keeping not only with my greater age, but
also with my own particular abilities. I had been born two years after the
founding of the colony and it wasn’t until I’d reached my twelfth birthday that
Dad had at last put me in charge of the three computers in the control room. I
suppose the system was really one large computer as the two normally inactive
ones formed part of a triple redundancy and one would spring to life in an
instant should something go wrong with Fred, as the computer system was
affectionately called.
Fred was one of the few technological things we had, having
originally been the seeding ship’s main computer and he essentially ran our
lives. He told us when and what to plant and which animals to mate, though we
were having serious problems in getting things to grow and breed as fast as
we’d have liked. Fred controlled the light-shutters, ran the osmosis plant to
purify the bore-water and even did all the dusting with numerous, but sometimes
annoying little robotic ‘snufflers’ which had come with him when he was removed
from the ship.
No matter how often Fred was told, the snufflers never seemed to
be able to tell the difference between ordinary fluff and a sock. Two
socks were quite safe. Snufflers could presumably tell that two of something
was meant to be, rather than an error. I had recently conducted a series of
experiments and had conclusively proved that it didn’t matter if the socks were
a proper pair or even the same shape or colour … as long as there were two of
them, the snufflers left them strictly alone. A single sock however was doomed.
It was immaterial where the sock was placed as well. On the floor, in a drawer
or on top of a cupboard hidden in a box, it was fodder for the snufflers and
would vanish, never to be seen again. As Fred’s cello-loom supplied all manner
of disposable clothing including socks upon demand, it wasn’t really a problem.
People had learned that if they lost one sock, the other would happily
disappear fairly quickly. What I wanted to know was what constituted a
lost sock? Surely if there was another to disappear, then the first hadn’t
really been lost. I put this to Fred who was quite mysterious about it, implying
it was the fault of the snufflers as they were relatively brainless, but I
wasn’t convinced.
Despite my apparent fascination with socks, being the son of the
two chief scientists had equipped me with quite a good brain, even if Dad had
occasionally called me ‘dunderhead’. For years I’d thought he was referring to
my copper-coloured hair and up until just after he’d put me in charge of Fred,
I hadn’t thought to ask him what it actually meant. When I did, he’d
grinned at me, ruffled the aforementioned hair and said it meant he loved me
very much. I remember I’d gone away with a warm but somewhat embarrassed glow,
only to feel mortified when one of the two older children told me what it really
meant! I resolved at that point not to continue to be a dunderhead and spent
every available minute with Fred, learning about anything and everything. Then
one day I overheard Dad telling Mum that he couldn’t understand it; that almost
overnight I had turned into a right little sponge.
I was terrified! At the time, I had absolutely no idea what
a sponge was and I’d thought there must be something horribly wrong with me. It
took a whole day before I thought to ask Fred. I got even more worried
when he told me it was a marine invertebrate animal, common in the seas of earth,
which spent the majority of its life anchored to a rock by its head, sucking
stray food in one hole and blowing its wastes out of another. When I finally
plucked up enough courage to ask Teacher the same question, I got roughly the
same answer, except where Fred had said ‘wastes’, Teacher said ‘shit’. I
suppose he must have seen his explanation hadn’t helped me very much and to my
eventual relief, he asked me why I wanted to know and had laughed long and loud
when I hesitantly told him what Dad had said.
It was funny later, but at the time it only increased my resolve
never to be caught like that again, which was one of the reasons Fred became my
constant companion. The other was that Mum had difficulties during my birth and
wasn’t able to get pregnant again, so I didn’t have any siblings to keep me
company and adopted Fred as a replacement brother. Fred had helped me construct
an almost human interface and he and I now talked as if we were two good
friends. He had even imitated my appearance so he looked like my blue-eyed
twin, right down to the freckles, cheeky grin and the ever-unruly red locks.
As much as I’d have liked to, right after learning I had no time
to chat to Fred but had to perform the system checks and feed my electronic
friend with all the daily data gathered by everybody else. For instance, Jake
would sometimes tell me about the pigs; how each of them was, how much they
weighed and how much they’d eaten. He always reported how many chicken and duck
eggs he’d found and even where he’d found them. Fred wanted to know everything
and in return, would provide us with interesting information, sometimes even
the most astonishing stuff. One day for example, he informed me he’d concluded
something interesting about the chickens and asked me if I’d like to know what
it was. Fred was like that; never pushy or presumptuous. In fact he was
sometimes downright reticent, but at least he didn’t sound the warning alarms
when he’d finally figured out something quite trivial. That time, he’d told me
the hens needed fifteen percent more space, at least four more small bushes and
that their diet was low in selenium. Little Jake was all agog when I’d told him
of course and rushed off to talk to his parents about wire and bushes and where
could he get ‘selemium’.
Jake was a nice boy, really open and friendly and although it was
already apparent he wasn’t going to win any competitions based upon thinking,
his father swore Jake could speak pig. And chicken too for that matter. The few
animals we had all responded well to him.
However; it wasn’t Jake who concerned us all later that day but
his brother, Peter. Like Jake, Peter wasn’t overly blessed with brains but was
already becoming a really good carpenter. He was almost a year younger than me
and was my closest friend besides Fred. We had recently celebrated Peter’s
fifteenth birthday by getting slightly drunk on fermented redberry juice and
engaging in some tentative sexual exploration in the little copse bordering the
silage pit. Unfortunately for both of us, it was just starting to get really
interesting when Peter toppled over and fell in.
I had just begun entering the daily figures when Fred interrupted
me. This time he did set the alarms off and everyone rushed to the main
hall to hear what he had to say. He waited until all thirty-nine of us were
present before continuing. It wasn’t good news. In fact, it was just about the
worst news we could possibly get.
‘Good day to all,’ Fred
commenced as usual. ‘I have some worrying information.’ He waited until the
murmuring had died down and then carried on. ‘I have questioned all my sensors
and all appear to be in working order. I’m afraid that I cannot detect the
presence of Peter Carrow in or around the compound area.’
I felt a nasty hollowness forming in my stomach as Dad’s voice
rose above the immediate hubbub.
‘Is this a drill, Fred?’
‘It is not a drill, Martin.’
‘Have you any suggestions?’
‘I have managed to reach the mining expedition sent out earlier
today and have asked that they return and commence sweeps on hillsides two and
three.’ Fred paused while Mum and Nurse ushered Peter’s crying parents and a
bewildered Jake out of the hall. ‘I suggest we send out a second team to sweep
hillsides one and four. I recommend the following personnel for the search.’
I was rather surprised when Fred included my name among the four
people to look for Peter. My appreciation at being trusted for such a serious
and possibly dangerous task was quickly tempered when I recalled from earlier
discussions with Fred that he would always base such choices not only upon who
might be best equipped for such a task, but equally, who might be the least
loss to the colony if killed.
I felt a slight chill down my spine as I hurried off to be
prepared for my very first trip outside.
~
Centauran - available in book or
download format – What had happened to David’s friend Peter, and would David
himself suffer the same fate? There was something out there – something nasty …
but something wonderful as well. Buy Centauran, and follow David’s adventures
with the Ifshiri.