Writers of the Future, Volume 29 (10 page)

“The most advanced ship we have. We're not taking anything for granted this time.”

So a week later, we were off in the best Scout ship yet built. Twice the size of our usual craft, it was long, sleek and beautiful, but more important, it had shields that could withstand a small supernova and enough cloaking to fool major planetary defenses.

The brass hadn't let us see the reports on the planet before we left—probably didn't want scary details leaking out. Lester loaded the reports as soon as the ship left orbit. I looked over his shoulder. “They're kind of cute.”

Lester advanced to some gruesome pictures. “Sort of like old Earth bears only with a really bad attitude. They're highly territorial outside of their extended family lineages. Their method for handling disagreements is genocide. The first probe sent remotes to the surface and caught them blowing their neighbors to bits. Taking prisoners doesn't seem to be one of their concepts.”

The pictures were stomach-churning. “Did the second probe get any data before it got hit?”

“Yeah. Looks like they've formed the equivalent of nation-states on the various continents. It detected numerous bursts that were probably chemical bombs. They've just moved the scale of violence up in the last century.”

“Did it send back an electromagnetic spectrum analysis?”

Lester checked the index and brought up the display. “Why is this important?”

“Go back to your History of Technology course: humans used radio waves to transmit information for hundreds of years.” I pointed to several activity peaks on the chart. “And so are our bears. We can sit a comfortable distance away and monitor them. I definitely do not want to get anywhere close to the surface of this planet.” Lester was all for that.

We came out of hyperspace behind a neighboring gas giant planet and maneuvered into an orbit with one of the target planet's moons between us and the bears' instruments. There was evidence the bears had sent probes to their moons but hadn't established permanent settlements or active sensors.

An impressive amount of radio traffic made it through their ionosphere. Audio, video and data, much of it encrypted, was coming from all the major land masses. Using the linguistic data from the first probe, we soon had translations for some of the feeds. Most of the unencrypted transmissions seemed to be propaganda: momma bear and poppa bear have to defend baby bear against those other nasty bears that want to kill him. The most ominous messages said, “We won't be the first bears to use nuclear weapons, but we sure as hell will use them if some other bear does.”

Nuclear hotspots on most of the continents indicated that our bear friends had been testing their technology and had something that worked.

We deployed a heavily cloaked drone to determine how many weapons existed on the planet. The drone had to fly through a maze of debris from recently destroyed satellites. It made it through undetected and tracked the number, placement and movement of weapons. A rapid buildup was turning the planet into a nuclear waste dump.

We stayed two weeks. It would have been impossible to send a probe to the ground, given the paranoid nature of the populace. As we decrypted the most heavily scrambled messages, it looked like war was imminent. Neither of us wanted to stay and watch the carnage. We left the probe orbiting a safe distance away and went home.

No one seemed surprised by our findings. The colonel and the captain nodded gravely and said that this confirmed the data from the earlier, destroyed probe. The man from the Colonization Bureau who'd been with them during our debriefing spilled the beans. He said, “If we don't act immediately, we'll lose this world.”

The older colonel grabbed the man's elbow. “These Scouts don't need to hear about these plans.”

Lester stood up. “You've already got a plan for this planet?”

I sat for a second putting two and two together. I didn't like the sum. “You're going to colonize that planet. But first you've got to get rid of the indigenous population.”

The man from the Colonization Bureau looked at me as if I were some congenital imbecile. “They're as good as dead already. There's no use wasting a perfectly good planet. Do you know how few we get each year?”

“Yeah, I scout them, but these bear things aren't dead yet.”

The captain gave Lester and me a cold stare. “The planet will be irretrievably damaged if we wait for full-scale nuclear war. As it is, cleanup will take decades.”

Lester was trembling. “You're going to sterilize a planet with a couple of billion intelligent individuals on it. Hell, we probably triggered this war with our first probe.”

“Perhaps,” the colonel said, “but that doesn't matter now. Your figures confirm that the coming war will destroy all life and all possibility of future life on the planet. It is dead.” The colonel held up his hand as he rose from his seat. “And this debriefing is over. I see the mission has been stressful for both of you; therefore, you deserve a vacation. You are dismissed.”

The three exited the room as Lester stood, silently shaking with rage.

I
've been waved goodbye to when leaving for vacation; I've been sent off with gestures that indicated my returned presence was not desired; but I've never been given a sendoff by an armed guard. They put us on a Scout ship preprogrammed for a flight to a pleasure planet with the controls locked. The computer showed us lovely images of the world we'd be visiting, played soothing music (whether we liked it or not), and offered us a range of entertainments, but no communications.

The planet was far away, so we had nearly a month cooped up on the ship to calm down. To some extent, it worked. We ranted for a few days. It's hard not to when you think about planetary sterilization. It's not a pretty idea and no way near as clean as the name implies.

What they do is deploy a bunch of big satellites around the planet and bombard it with gamma rays. After a while, everything on the planet dies; turned to a mildly radioactive sludge. Then they toss in some Terran bugs to start eating the sludge and wait for the radioactivity to clear.

We burned ourselves out after a few days and settled into our usual shipboard routine. It must have bugged Lester more than me. I ended up a couple of credits ahead in our card games by the end of the voyage.

“Aidan,” Lester asked during one marathon game, “what are you going to do after your twenty-five?”

“I've got this picture in my head of a planet that's big enough to have a city with good entertainment, restaurants, maybe a college, but not so big that it has weather control. I still like seasons.”

“More skating?”

“Yeah. I'll find a place with a pond so I can skate in the winter and a little land to grow some veggies during the summer.”

Lester chuckled. “Somehow I just can't see you as the gentleman farmer.”

“Well, maybe not the gentleman, but I'll have enough money to buy a farm. Only money I spend now is what I lose to you at cards.”

“Then you must not be putting much away.” Lester smiled.

I considered decking him but there was no one around to repair my hand.

He drew another card. “Gonna get married?”

“Don't know.”

“Miyuki wouldn't want you being lonely.”

“I know, but sometimes you just fall hard for a woman.” I shuffled the cards. “What do you have planned after your twenty-five?”

“That's too far away.”

I shook my head. “Don't give me that. Every Scout starts thinking about that even before they're accepted into the Scouts.”

He picked up his hand. “Okay. I'm going to settle on a world with weather control, on a part of the planet where it's always sunny, and build a house with a transparent ceiling.”

“Let me guess, no basement.”

“Damned straight!”

I
suppose it shouldn't have surprised either of us to find Marina waiting when the ship arrived. Planning is a Scout forte. We had all been booked into a hotel that stood on a pristine beach by a waterfall in the semitropical region of the planet. The planet has zero tilt and a nearly circular orbit, so the weather is boringly predictable and predictably beautiful. The rains came like clockwork every afternoon for around an hour. They were warm and gentle. Guests would go for walks and come back soaked and laughing. The rest of the days were warm and sunny, evenings balmy. Trails led from the resort into a jungle interior filled with the scents of exotic flowers and the music of birds, where native and Terran plants coexisted and where the largest carnivore was about the size of a small dog and couldn't have done much more than inflict a severe bite if it had a taste for humans, which it didn't.

When Marina and Lester weren't in their room, they stationed themselves on the beach, soaking up the sun. Each room came with a Lester-sized bottle of suntan lotion, complete with anticancer agents. The two of them took great care ensuring that every exposed inch of each other's body was slathered in the stuff.

After a couple of days exploring trails through the lush growth around the resort, I stationed myself in the bar. The second day there, I saw a woman with auburn hair, about my age, trim, dressed fashionably, seated in a booth by one of the outside windows. She gazed at Marina and Lester on the beach. I watched her for about half a beer, trying to decide if I should mind my own business or make this enforced vacation a little more interesting. I eventually sidled over to her table. “They make a nice couple.”

She seemed startled but turned and peered back at the beach. “I suppose they do. It's just a bit difficult to see your daughter and her lover at that level of intimacy.”

I was surprised but caught myself—of course the Scouts would think of something to divert me. I looked out. Lester was doing an incredibly thorough job of applying suntan lotion on Marina's upper thighs. Through the open windows we could hear the occasional moan from Marina. “He's really a good kid.”

She glanced at me. “You must be his partner. He says good things about you.” She motioned to the other side of the booth. “I'm Mona. Please, have a seat.”

“Thanks.” I sat. We looked out the window at the giggling pair. “They seem very happy together.”

“I know.” She looked back at me. “I just don't know if they have a future together. My husband made it to thirteen. Marina barely remembers him.”

I nodded. “If you'd known what would happen before you married him, would it have stopped you?”

She sat staring into her drink. “Probably not.” She glanced up at me. “It's amazing how foolish we can be when we're young and think we're immortal.”

I raised my glass. “Here's to youth.”

She clinked her glass on mine and took a long swallow. “If I stay here watching them much longer, I'll go completely nuts.”

“Up the beach there's a waterfall even lovelier than this one. Care to try a beach hike?”

She glanced at Marina, now straddling Lester, rubbing lotion on his chest. Mona downed her drink. “I'd love to.”

The walk progressed to day hikes and picnics and, after they got over the shock, double dates with the kids.

Our vacation was scheduled for two months. With no way off the planet, we settled in and enjoyed it. With a month left, Mona and I decided to quit chaperoning the kids and took a trip to the temperate portion of the planet. The original plan for this planet had been as a working agricultural colony. The primitive native vegetation had proven harmless to humans and had quickly succumbed to the introduced Terran flora and fauna. Everything flourished, but the planet was just too far from the centers of civilization and never attracted the expected colonists. So the world became a tourist trap.

In the temperate zone, the plan called for creation of a forest of redwood and kauri trees to supply wood for houses that were never built. The trees had been growing undisturbed for nearly a century. We strolled through the giants. I held Mona close when breezes blew chill off the ocean. We sat in the lodge before a blaze in the great fireplace and drank hot brandy as the world outside melted into the fog.

And that was all we did. I think we might both have wished for more, but we both had memories we couldn't leave behind. Within that limitation, we enjoyed our time together.

At the end of two months, Lester and I saw the women off and walked back to the Scout ship. Lester was smiling. “Ever heard of the Movement for Just Colonialism?”

“No.”

“Neither had I, but Marina knew about them and by tonight, the movement will know what's scheduled to happen to the bears.” He stopped and looked at me. “There may still be time to stop the government from sterilizing that planet. If those stupid bear things want to kill themselves, that's too damned bad, but it's their decision to make. I don't want to be a party to their murder.”

“You give Marina a big kiss from me next time you see her.”

“Sure thing.”

We walked back to our life.

The planet for mission twenty-three seemed routine, easy. The number of flora and fauna species was low. I couldn't tell if they were too scared to let something happen to us or were feeding us a ringer, so we didn't let that lessen our preparation. By the time we landed, the only question we hadn't answered was: What is the source of the flashing lights on the planet's surface?