The Green Book (2 page)

A time came when we reached the light of a new sun. Bright golden light filled the spaceship from the starboard portholes. The cocks woke up and crowed as if for all the missing mornings on the whole long trip. The sun warmed the ship, and made it hard to sleep at sleeping time. And then the new planet loomed up on the starboard side. It looked unlike the Earth, said the grownups, who could remember what the Earth had looked like. It was redder and shinier; it had no cloud drifts around it. When it got near, it looked like maps in bright colors. It didn't look green. People spent all day looking anxiously through the portholes at it, trying to guess the meaning of what they could see. Just before touchdown, we could all see a land with mountains, craggy and rocky, and large lakes lying on the land surface everywhere; but as the ship came in to land, nightfall was racing us across the ground—a big black shadow, engulfing everything, moving faster than we were ourselves, its crescent edge going at a dizzy speed, and leaving us behind, so that we landed in total darkness. It was an auto-control landing anyway. It happened smoothly. The ship landed at a steep angle, but immediately straightened up by leveling its podlike legs. Then it switched off its own gravity and hummed quietly into run-down cycles.

When the gravity machine switched off, everyone felt lightheaded, and, indeed, light. The planet's own gravity was less than the ship had got us used to. Pattie found she could jump up and touch her cabin roof, and land without thudding enough to make anyone cross. Everyone felt full of energy, and eagerness to get out. But the Guide said the ship must be kept locked till daylight. So little was known, it would be dangerous to go out.

Arthur, the head of one of the families, said he would go and have a look, at his own risk, and then the Guide spoke to us very sternly.

“It's natural to feel excited,” he said. “But this is not a holiday. We are a handpicked group; we are the minimum number that can possibly survive and multiply. Between us we have the skills we require. But the loss of a single member of our party will endanger the survival of us all. There is no such thing, Arthur, as ‘your own risk.' Not any more. And may we all remember that.”

We sat around, fidgeting, restless, talking together in lowered voices, waiting for dawn. None of the games interested us now. Pattie couldn't sleep, though Father made her lie down on her bunk. The feeling of suspense, the unfamiliar rhythm of the machines running themselves toward shutdown, the altered pitch of the voices around her kept her awake so late, so long, that when dawn broke at last she was fast asleep and did not see it.

But Sarah told her it had come like a dark curtain being swept aside in a single rapid movement; for a few minutes there was a deep indigo light, and after that, brilliance.

The Guide walked around the ship, looking out of each porthole in turn. All that he could see was rocks, white and gray, rather glittery crags, all very near the ship, blocking any distant view. They gave Arthur a breathing mask and put him through the inner door to the ship's main hatch, closing it behind him before he opened the outer door. He came back very quickly. “Come out,” he said. “The air is good.”

So we trooped down the ramp and found ourselves in the shadow of the ship, in a narrow gully between one rock face and another. It seemed to be a sort of hanging valley in a hill. A tiny runnel of flowing clear liquid threaded between rocks in the bottom of the dip, over a bed of silver-white sand and pebbles. Malcolm, the party's chemist, took a sample of the stream in a little specimen bottle, to test it.

Pattie was so sleepy after the night before that she could hardly walk, and Father picked her up and carried her, nodding with drowsiness, rather than leave her alone in the ship. She went in his arms, up the slope toward a gentle saddle between one side of the valley and the other, where all the others were walking. It was easy to walk, even up the slope; Pattie felt light and easy to carry. So up we all went to the rim of the hollow, and looked over.

Before us lay a wide and gentle plain sloping to the shores of a round wide lake some miles across. Beyond the lake, a very high mountain with perfectly symmetrical slopes rose into the sky, topped with snow. A mirror image of the lovely mountain hung inverted in the lake, quite still, for the surface was like glass, perfectly unruffled by even the slightest impulse of the air. The surface of the plain was gray and silver, shining like marcasite in places, in others with a pewter sheen. To the left and right of the plain, on gentle hills, were wide sweeps of woodland, with quite recognizable and normal trees, except that the leaves upon them were not green but shades of red, and shining, like the blaze of an amazing autumn. It was very beautiful, and perfectly silent, and perfectly still.

The children ran forward onto the open expanse of land before them, shouting. And at once we were limping, crying, and hopping back. We were still wearing the soft ship slippers we had been given to keep down the noise in the corridors of the spacecraft, and the pretty gray grass and flowers had cut through the thin leather at once, and cut our feet. The Guide ordered the crate of boots to be brought from the store and unpacked. Someone fetched ointment and bandages. Meanwhile, we stooped and picked the sharp plants, which broke easily in our fingers when gathered; they seemed to be made of glass, sharp and shining like jewels. But as soon as we all had boots on, we could walk over them safely, for the growth was crushed beneath the soles, as fragile and as crunchy to walk on as the frost-stiffened grass of winter on Earth.

We all walked over the crisp and sparkling frost plain, down toward the shores of the lake. It took an hour to reach it. The lake shore was a wide silver beach, made of soft bright sand, like grains of worn-down glass. And all the time we walked toward the lake, it did not move, or ruffle, even enough to shake the curtains of reflected mountain and reflected sky that hung in it. And though the air smelled good and sweet to breathe, it was windless, and as still as the air in a deep cave underground. Only the little rivulet that followed us across to the lake from the crag valley where the ship had lodged moved; it chuckled gently from stone to stone, and sparkled as brightly as the glass leaves and grass. When we got to the beach, Pattie went to look where it joined the lake, to see if it would make some splash or ripples for just a little way, but it seemed to slide beneath the surface at once and made only the faintest ripple ring, quickly dying in the brilliant mirror of the lake.

“I think we may be lucky,” said the Guide. “I think this place is good.”

People laughed, and some of the grownups kissed each other. The children ran to the edge of the lake and made it splash. Jason's mother ran along the beach, calling to the wading children not to drink from the lake until Malcolm had made sure it was water. Everyone was thirsty from walking, and the lake looked clear and good, but we all obediently drank from the flagons of recycled water from the ship.

“Right,” said the Guide. “We shall begin the settlement program. And first we need to name the place we are about to build. The instructions suggest that the youngest person present should give the name. That can't include the real babies, obviously; Pattie or Jason—which is the youngest?”

Jason's mother and Pattie's father spoke together.

“It is Pattie, by a few days,” said Father. “Well, Pattie, where are we?”

“We are at Shine, on the first day,” said Pattie, solemnly.

“Good girl,” said the Guide. “This place, then, is Shine. And now we must all work, and fast, for we do not know how long the days are here, or what dangers there may be.” And he began to hand out jobs to each one in turn.

So people went back to the ship to unload the land truck, fill it with tents and food and sleeping bags, and bring them to the shore. Malcolm went to complete his tests for water. A work party was formed to unload the land hopper and put it together. The land hopper would glide or fly just above the ground, and let us explore quickly, and then it would run out of fuel and be of no more use. And the Guide had two men standing with guns ready, one each side of the camping ground, in case of wild beasts, or enemies.

“In science fiction, bullets go right through things and they come right on anyway, roaring,
urrrrrr
!” said Jason. “And we're in science fiction now, aren't we, so what good are guns?”

“We are in Shine,” said Pattie. “And no monsters will come.” Jason hadn't talked to her much on the flight; he was much shorter than she, and he thought she was older. But now he had found that, although she was taller, she was younger, and he got friendlier.

There was no job for either, so they watched Joe setting up a tally stick. It was a huge plastic post with rows and rows of holes in it, and black pegs to move in the holes.

“What's it for, Joe?” they asked.

“It's a calendar,” said Joe. “We have to count the days here, or we'll lose track. All the things on the ship will run down and stop working—clocks, calculators, everything. So this thing just keeps a count—you move one hole for each day. You move the peg, and you remember when you are.”

“A tree of days,” said Pattie.

The grownups brought a stove from the ship, and a can of fuel, and set it up to cook supper on the beach, for the sand was soft and easy to sit and walk on, unlike the gray glass grass. A ring of tents went up around the stove. Malcolm decided that the little stream and the huge lake were both good water, fit to drink—and after the stale recycled water we had been drinking for so long, how fresh and clean and cool the lake water tasted! Everyone laughed again, and passed the cups from hand to hand, exclaiming.

The Guide said they must set a guard over the camp all night. “Any kind of living thing, harmless or savage, may be here,” he said. The wilderness seemed so beautiful and so still it was hard to believe that, but they chose five of the men to take turns on watch.

And only just in time, for soon after the watch was chosen, the night came upon us. A curtain of deep lilac light swept across the lake, obscuring the sight of the mountain, and sinking almost at once to a deepening purple, then inky darkness. It got dark much quicker than it would have done on Earth—in less than half an hour. The darkness was complete for a moment or two; and then as our eyes got used to it, it was pierced by hundreds of bright and unknown stars—nameless constellations shining overhead. People began to spread their bedding in the tents, and to settle to sleep, and as they did so, a gust of air shook the tent walls, and there was a sighing sound of wind in the woods, and a lapping of water on the shore close by, unseen in the dark. And then the air was quite still again, and it began to rain, heavily and steadily, though the stars were still bright and clear above. When Pattie fell asleep, she could hear Father and Malcolm talking together in low voices at the other end of the tent.

“There must be no dust at all in this atmosphere,” said Malcolm. “That would scatter light and delay the dark. No wonder it feels so invigorating to breathe.”

Father took his turn on watch, but nothing stirred all night, he said. The rain stopped in an hour or so, and not so much as a gust of air moved anywhere around. At the sudden return of daylight, all was well.

The next day the land hopper was fitted out. It was a small craft that could carry four men and a scanning viewer to make tapes for the computer in the spaceship. It could hover about forty feet up and glide over water and dry land. It was going to explore the whole planet, looking above all for any sign of life, any possible enemy creature. It had a navigation program built in, sensitive to the planet's own gravity. A lot of people wanted to go on the trip, and the Guide had to choose the crew like a raffle, pulling names out of a bag. Father stayed. The people who stayed would have to look for materials to build houses. Tents would not do forever.

Of course, we went first to the woods, to cut down trees. A party of grownups went, carrying saws and axes, and the children went with them to watch. The light in the wood was all ruby-red and crimson where the sun struck down through the red leaves overhead. The trees wouldn't be cut down. The saw blades were blunted as soon as they cut through the soft gray bark. The trees were far harder than wood on Earth. Arthur suggested trying a hacksaw, and that did better, bringing out of the cut in the tree trunk a fine silver dust like metal filings. The work went very slowly and was very boring to watch; after they had been working an hour, the cut was only an inch or so deep.

Father began walking around the wood, looking for twigs on the ground. When he found some, he broke them and held the broken ends to the light. He showed Arthur and Joe what he saw.

“Look, this stuff has a different structure from wood. It's made of lots of little rods joined together. It's very hard to saw, but I guess it will be easy to split.”

“I hope you're right,” said Arthur. “It will take ten years to build a single house if we have to saw planks and it takes as long as this!”