Blighted Star Read online

  Blighted Star

  by Tom Parkinson

  For Sarah

  "Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"

  "Yes."

  "All like ours?"

  "I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound—a few blighted."

  "Which do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?"

  "A blighted one."

  "'Tis very unlucky that we didn't pitch on a sound one, when there were so many more of 'em!"

  Thomas Hardy Tess of the d’Urbervilles

  Contents

  Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30

  Chapter 1

  Colony ship “Cassini” slowly pushed into the upper atmosphere of the planet. Below lay a world of such suitability for human colonisation that the settlers on board had already got used to referring to it by its nickname, “Goldilocks” rather than the name it had received at the end of the initial project, “Saunder’s World”. Neither too hot nor too cold, the new world advertised its rich abundance of plant life by a glowing chlorophyll green shot with tiny patches of blue where lakes pooled on its gently undulating surface.

  As they nestled deeper into the sky, Grad felt the tiniest jolt as artificial gravity phased out, giving way to planetary gravity. If anything the sensation was one of becoming lighter, a giddy feeling of nearly floating out of your seat. Even the gravity here was calculated to lend them a hand, at only ninety – six percent of that of Earth, even your luggage would seem lighter as someone had joked.

  Grad studied a readout of the planet’s surface. With the exception of one or two small shrubs the surface was covered almost to the last inch with a grass analogue that grew to about knee high. All was as the many probes had shown. Still absent were the animals that the probes had been unable to find. If they were anywhere, Grad reckoned, then they were incredibly rare.

  All in all, Goldilocks’ only drawback was in its extreme remoteness from the nearest other human settlement, a remoteness that had prevented the usual barrage of visits by exploration teams. The one visit, to the site they would be landing at in a few minutes, had surveyed the terrain for two hundred klicks all round, had confirmed the planet to be a true paradise, and had left. For many of those on board, this very remoteness was an added attraction.

  Lana leaned over from her pilot’s seat to nudge his arm “Fresh air!”

  She had a point. After two years of over a thousand people sucking in the same air over and over you might tell yourself that the scrubbers kept it purer than planetary air, but you still felt like you could taste the stale. It was the kind of thing you didn’t mention in deep space, but with minutes to go before the hatches opened…

  He forced himself to concentrate as they descended through a wispy layer of cloud. A few drops of rain smearing across the windscreen filled him with an intense feeling of joy; water which hadn’t been drunk by hundreds of people already. In fact, water that had never been drunk by anybody else He glanced across at Lana and her answering smile showed him that she felt the same way.

  The beacon that guided their final approach was now visible as a Day-Glo exclamation against the green background. The ship glided down to it and hovered. Four great struts dropped softly from the belly and found stable footing. The ship settled and the engines slowly wound down. The two pilots reached out and started to throw the myriad of switches on the control panel in front of them.

  <><><>

  Gunnar Olafson stood at the head of the stairs leading down from the ship. He only paused for a moment but he could feel the impatience of the people behind him. Now that the time had actually arrived, he was surprised to find in himself a certain reluctance to leave what had, after all, been his home for two years. He hefted his haversack and set off down the metal steps. At each corner of the ship people were disembarking down the staircases built into the mighty craft’s landing struts. At the base of each one a crowd was gathering into which each newly disembarked passenger was quickly welcomed and absorbed. Gunnar had no one to welcome him, but that was the way he preferred things to be. He had left his entire life behind him on the asteroid colony he had been born into. Now at last there was the open sky of which he had always dreamed of, and it was all his!

  There was a sudden soft hiss which made Gunnar, and all around him, tilt their heads up. Dropping from the underside of the Bounty, fifteen probes set off on their circumnavigation voyages. Each would return in about two days, barring any mishaps.

  <><><>

  Johan Weber eyed the probes with disapproval. He sincerely hoped that he would soon be seeing a great deal less Godless technology. Behind him, the cargo lifts had just disgorged the vats in which the horses were by now nearly fully formed. In a few days the cows would follow, then the pigs and the sheep. Johan didn’t like having had to use the vats, but it would be the last time, and there really hadn’t been any other way. The colonisation agency had just laughed at the idea of transporting livestock through two years of deep space. Oh well, one last supper with the Devil and then they could begin their new lives in purity.

  <><><>

  With the probes sent out, their work was done for now. Grad and Lana tore off the straps which held them in their seats and bounded for the exit at the back of the cockpit. Both arriving at the same time they jammed together in the doorway, neither prepared to let the other go through first. They each pushed until Grad, as usual, gave way, and Lana raced ahead laughing down the now empty corridor.

  She didn’t get far as there was still a queue at the head of the stairs. A blast of cool evening air sobered them both, and Grad felt Lana’s hand seek his as they stepped forward and out through the hatch.

  <><><>

  Athena Johnson was the last person on the ship. As she stood at the head of the stairs far above the groups of settlers she felt a mixture of pride and apprehension. Here was another green world. Another chance for humanity to better itself. Here there was no history of war or genocide. Would mankind get it right here she wondered? Looking at the people below, most of whom had moved out from under the shadow of the Cassini and into the evening sunlight she felt a sense of awe at her responsibility to them. She sighed; her first duty on the new world would be to marshal them all back in to their cabins for the night. First night protocol even on an ostensibly deserted planet. Inherent in command was the tendency to unpopularity, she sighed, then commed a general announcement.

  <><><>

  The probe droned on through the night, mapping in intricate detail the terrain below. In the background of plant life there were the occasional flashes of animal life, but only on a very minor scale, and only extremely spread out. Equipped to read down to a depth of four metres (basically bedrock almost everywhere on Goldilocks) the probe was picking up the tiny signatures of annelids and invertebrates tunnelling below the soil. Nothing even as advanced as an insect was registering. The probe rose slightly to overfly an outcrop of rock standing like an island on the flat plain. As it crossed the ridge it slowed momentarily and ejected marker peg number twelve, the last of its payload and the one which marked where the outermost settlement of the colony in this direction would be, the settlement where the Amish would live.

  <><><>

  Below, in the soil, a small drama was unfolding. One of the tiny wormlike creatures had sensed a pursuer in the tunnel it had left in its passage through the soft soil. It felt no panic, for its vestigial brain was insufficient for such a high lev
el response. However it quickened its pace in answer to the imperative of instinct. As it fled through the soil its senses kept it aware of the speed with which its pursuer was closing. The enemy was travelling much more quickly, merely following down the tunnel the worm had to shoulder open. Quite soon came the point at which the worm realised that the soil offered no protection, rather the certainty of death, and it opted for the surface. It wriggled free and out into the air. Then, it snaked its way through the stalks of “grass”. Faint instinct urged it to dive back into the soil, to cover itself up from attack out here in the open, but this instinct was a mere echo of the time when predators had stalked the upper world. Now, all danger came from within the ground.

  Behind the worm the tunnel mouth disgorged the enemy. It looked like a worm itself but a shrivelled and blasted version of one. It moved in a spasmodic series of jerks, and now that the worm had freed itself from the restrictions of the tunnel, the gap between prey and predator began to open. The enemy slithered after the worm remorselessly, as if aware that the worm would, in the end, have to return to the soil to feed.

  <><><>

  By midday the ground below the ship was dotted with small neat piles of people’s belongings. And the shuttle craft was beginning the task of taking them out to one of the two settlements east of Cassini… It had been agreed that permanent settlement of the surface was to take place in successive waves. Cassini would start the process by settling a relatively small strip in the southern temperate band roughly fifty kilometres long. The ship would sacrifice herself, piece by piece, to provide the materials to build the towns of Crescent Waters and Heart Lake. The settlement of later waves would be informed by the challenges met in the first waves, for it was thought to be very likely that some mistakes would be made.

  Predictably on the fringes were the Amish. Mrs Johnson was aware that all they sought from her was to be left alone, yet she could not help but feel responsible for them as much as she did for everyone else. She knew that it would be particularly hard to let the children go beyond the reach of medical aid and of the state of the art education they could have received. The Elders had politely but firmly declined every attempt she had made to get them to at least take a comms set with them so that they could call in help; not one of them carried the implanted comms set with which almost all human beings were equipped, nor the embedded life tracer which almost everyone carried in the loose skin of their upper arms. Athena sucked her teeth glumly. Then, catching herself in that act, glanced around to check that no one had seen her, and turned her mind to things she could actually do something about.

  As if on cue Lieutenant Jackson appeared. As usual his purposeful gait suggested that he had something on his mind. She sighed softly to herself.

  “Ma’am. Requesting permission to deploy the men to assist the unloading officer.”

  “By all means Lieutenant.” inwardly she added “and don’t bother me with trivialities…” Really he was the most impossible of men, a mixture of pompous arrogance and I-know-my-place obsequiousness. She stopped herself. No project does well with personality clashes at the top she reasoned, and besides, he will be leaving when the next wave arrives in two years’ time. She strolled over to where the mining equipment was waiting for transport to the mine site. She trailed her hand across its smooth silver surface, feeling the power latent within the plasma sphere it contained. Power to punch right through to the mantle, extracting the iron and other elements they would need from the raw olerite. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in a flat panel and was surprised to see how tired the dark figure before her looked. Involuntarily she put her hand to the white flash in her afro hair. It had grown from her left temple, beginning almost on the very day four years before when she had been appointed to the post of Field Project Leader.

  She heard a cough, and glanced up to see Jim Chan, Now here was a man she liked, it was characteristic of him to alert her to his presence with a cough rather than just startling her out of her reverie the way Jackson might have done. Jim Chan was the flight engineer of the project while they had been in space and was now the head of the mining effort. Traditionally until the second ship landed on Saunder’s World, and interstellar travel links could be said to be in existence, he would continue to draw two paycheques, and so would be the richest man in the colony. It was due to his winning charm that no one even remotely resented this.

  “How are things looking, Jim?”

  “A 1, thanks Athena. We’re just waiting for the shuttle to come back from Heart Lake and then it’s our turn to deploy.” Jim’s grin held just a hint of nervousness. Someone else would have missed it but Athena Johnson and he had spent a great deal of time together during the course of the last two years.

  “Jim, I know you’ll be fine. I’ll get out to see you as soon as the settlers are all in place.” she patted his arm “You’ll be fine.”

  “Piece of cake.” They both laughed; they shared a taste for early earth films, particularly ones relating to man’s first steps among the stars.

  “Piece of cake.”

  <><><>

  Amazingly quickly the settlers established a routine and within the week they had started to think of the beautiful new planet as home. Each day the sun shone down, with only the briefest of showers to keep the grass green and to take the heat out of the afternoon. Every night the crowds would gather on the green beside the ship and gaze up at the alien stars. One feature in particular could not fail to fasten their interest; high above them the stars swirled in a fantastic pattern of colours round a blackhole, A cosmic display that had been named after the terrible vortex of Scandinavian fame, the ‘Skagorack’. Near the end of time, long after mankind had evolved into something profoundly different, or had simply ceased to be, the planet on which they stood would spiral into the centre of the Skagorack and be lost. But for now the sight was a nightly spectacle of celestial pyrotechnics.

  <><><>

  The alarm on the vat alerted Johann to the completion of another cycle and he strode across to it. The shrill buzzing had also alerted the small crowd of children nearby and they came running across to see what new addition to what they saw as a little zoo would appear next. He raised the top hatch and reached inside. He had to reach quite far in and he turned his face to one side as he did so. He met the gaze of the Engineer’s little girl, a sweet little child with a slightly Chinese air about her. She looked at him intently. His hand found something, got hold, and with a flourish like a magician producing a rabbit from a hat he lifted the first of the lambs into view. The child gasped, impressed. With quick motions he cleaned the gel from the small body with his free hand, slopping it back into the tank. He reached into his pocket for the jolter, the small device that would imbue the lamb with life, pushed it through the thin soft fur and onto the lamb’s skin at the base of its neck, and pulled the trigger. The tiny body kicked and bucked, and the lamb began to bleat. Smiling, he held it out in both hands and the children came flocking round to see.

  <><><>

  The gently undulating landscape unfolded before Lana as she skimmed along at three hundred metres. It was, she had to admit to herself, perhaps just a little boring. It might be ideal for farming but she couldn’t see it being the cradle of great art. Perhaps the painters to come would concentrate on the sky if they wanted the picturesque, for the big open spaces certainly made for beautiful sunsets. Not that sunsets could be anything else when you were in love, she thought. Her relationship with Grad had definitely blossomed into that. Two years living in each other’s pockets had given them plenty of chances to get on each other’s nerves, but instead they had reached a point where time spent apart seemed wrong, dead time. She grimaced; she was not a huge fan of gooeyness in others, and now she was finding irrefutable signs of gooiness in herself. Oh well… On the horizon a flash in the warm sunlight marked where the big silver ship was waiting. Only two more runs to Crescent Waters and she would be done for the day. She wondered if Grad would be in the mood fo
r a walk in the grass away from the base camp tonight…

  <><><>

  The farm animals were all assembled and the finishing touches were being put to the great cart which was to carry the two families on the long journey to their new home. It had been a sore temptation to accept the perfectly well meant offer of free transport in the shuttle, but enough compromises had already been made and the line had to be drawn somewhere. Besides, Johann secretly relished the idea of the long trek they would be making across this new world. It had a fine symbolic feel to it; a trek towards purity like the ones their forefathers had made so often.

  It would have been nice to have been able to make the cart out of the traditional wood rather than out of scavenged carbolite panels from their quarters on the ship; but they had been refused permission in the strongest terms when they had tried to book passage for lumber. The next cart would have to be made from metal for which they would have to trade. In another thirty or forty years the seeds Johann had brought would mature into trees and they would have wood again. God willing.

  Katinka came and stood at his elbow, when he turned with a question in his eyes, she nodded. After twenty years of marriage they had little need for talk. All was packed. He whistled, and the dogs, the last to come out of the vats, ambled over to him, tripping over their outsize paws, but eager to please. Good, already they were learning. On the way he would train them in the rudiments of shepherding.

  As the two families drove out into the warm morning air, Johann was surprised by how many of the English turned out to see them off. A crowd of about five hundred parted to let through the cart drawn by its team of artificially matured oxen. The menagerie of horses, sheep, goats and cows followed behind it on long lines. Katinka was at the reins, and beside her sat Hannah, a distant cousin of hers. The children were peeping shyly out from under the cover of the cart and Johann caught Petre’s eye. He winked and his son smiled back. As Daniel, Hannah’s husband and he set forth in the cart’s wake through the grass they were pressed on every side by people who wanted to shake their hands. Really, he thought, you could never tell with the English…