Blighted Star

"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

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

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
level 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.