Wildcatter (10 page)

Jordan called for more suggestions and no one spoke. “Very well. The question is whether we stay to explore this planet from orbit, with no obvious way to attempt a landing, or whether we proceed to Armada. By law, the final decision must be mine. I am strongly leaning to the Armada answer, but I invite comments.”

“I think the decision should be the prospector’s,” JC said. Eyebrows rose all around the table. “If he isn’t willing to go downside under any circumstances, we can do no more good here than Galactic has already done. If he thinks there’s a chance, then we owe it to ourselves and his courage to spend a week or two here.”

Seth also heard,
And we might be willing to bribe him a little.

The captain looked along the table to Seth. “Prospector? At the least your voice must carry more weight than anyone’s.”

“Sir, I’m not quite ready to say it’s hopeless,” Seth said. “We’ve spent fourteen months getting here. Captain, I agree with Commodore Lecanard that another weekend won’t hurt.”

Jordan studied him suspiciously. “You’d make a landing against those odds you gave us?”

“No, but I think I can cut those odds now, sir. Control, report the results of the last thirty simulated landings.”

—Most recent thirty landing simulations, twenty-three successful, seventy-seven percent.

“Well that settles it!” Jordan said. “Those odds are not—”

Seth had raised a hand to stop him. “Control, report the results of the last twenty simulated landings.”

—Most recent twenty landing simulations, eighteen successful, or ninety percent.

JC was starting to smirk. Not much got by him.

“Report the results of the last ten simulated landings.”

—Last ten landing simulations, one hundred percent successful.

JC roared in triumph and beat his fists on the table.

Jordan’s eyes burned like blue lasers; he was angry at being tricked. “How did you manage that, Prospector?”

“I cheated, sir. I need more time to make sure the cheat will work in practice.”

“I’ll accept that. You’re due on watch in a few hours and you look like you haven’t slept in a week. The rest of us aren’t helping you enough.”

Seth just shrugged.

“From now on you are relieved of all scheduled duties. I’ll post a new roster for the rest of us. You concentrate on the prospector duties. Control, enter orbit as proposed. Reese, clear away the dishes, please. Seth, I want a word with you.”

* * *

Jordan strode down the corridor to his cabin. Seth followed him in and closed the door.

“Sit!” Jordan pointed to the only chair, vaulted backwards on to a bed, and crossed his legs. Seth sat and laid one ankle on the other. His eyelids weighed tons. He had been working fifteen hours a day and not sleeping well the other nine.

“I can guess what you’re up to,” the captain said, “but it won’t work unless you promise him you’ll try a landing.”

“That’s what I’m working on, sir.”

“Can you drop any hints?”

“No, sir. I won’t know until Control can tell us more about conditions downside.”

With obvious disapproval, Jordan said, “Ok. But I warn you, if I think a landing looks too risky, I won’t allow it, no matter how much JC screams and yells. Now, listen. What I want to talk about … I know you desperately need to go and exercise your snoring muscles, but what I really need to discuss is you and Reese. You’re snapping at each other again.”

“I’m sorry. I—”

“No, it’s understandable. They call you dirty names and put you down every chance they get, whichever gender they are. It’s worse when you have to share a cabin. Do you know why they changed back to female again this time?”

“In case I do take the shuttle down. So you won’t make her ladyship risk her pretty little ass.”

Jordan smiled and shook his head. “No. She’s probably risked it in worse situations. Down, boy. I need to tell you a few things about Astrobiologist Platte.”

Seth crossed his ankles again. He didn’t need sex at the moment, or even talk about sex, just sleep. Hours and hours of sleep. He worried about letting the others down, letting himself down, muffing the only big chance he would ever get. If he went back home without trying the Cacafuego landing, his prospecting career would be over. No other expedition would ever hire a proven quitter, and he would never forgive himself. But he mustn’t let wishful thinking lull him into stupidity. If he tried and failed he would leave
Golden Hind
without a shuttle, so the others would have no choice but to head home again, with their hopes in tatters. What was the question again?

He thought back over the voyage. “You’ve been roommates twice?”

“Yes, but never this way round. Male, Reese’s a competent stud, a bit predictable but patient and gentle. We’ve agreed that next time we’ll change ends. You know how old they are?”

“Forty-one?”

“Older. But that’s subjective time. This is her fourth trip into the Big Nothing. She was born in 2282, ninety-four years ago. About seventy years before you were.”

Seth had no answer for that.

“They were one of the very first herms, Seth. Their family was wealthy, old money; their father won a Nobel Prize for medicine. Can you imagine a man who would put the experimental herm drugs into his own pregnant wife? Reese was conceived as a boy, if that matters to you. The process worked without a flaw, but they were a freak in their childhood, mocked, toured around like a circus. And their father was an absolute martinet, a disci­plinary extremist. I gather their mother was a Marie Antoinette-level snob.”

“Tragic. Which part of this does she blame on me?”

“Seth, Seth! She blames herself. Raised by a tyrant, brought up in a mansion, taught to despise the lower classes and their lustful debaucheries—you know how priggish people were last century! Now, thanks to some time slip, she’s lived so long she finds herself in a whole new culture, and she goes and falls for an uncouth, uncultured, muscle-bound, penniless yahoo a quarter her age?”

Jordan leaned back on his elbows and grinned at Seth’s disbelief.

“It’s true, Seth! What they tell you isn’t what they mean at all. Imagine how ashamed they feel. I don’t think they changed over this time because they were worrying about accompanying you. She just wants a few nights with you before you leave.”

“Nights to do what, fergawsake? Call me dirty names?”

“To get raped,” the captain said softly, and laughed at Seth’s reaction.

“Never!”

“I’m not suggesting you do it. That’s up to you. I’m just explaining that that’s the role she sees for you—a boorish, foul-mouthed, bodice-ripping punk imposing your lustful demands on her, ordering her into bed, talking dirty.”

Seth swallowed and licked dry lips. “You are telling me that Reese Platte has rape fantasies?”

“When female, yes. And you are the thug of her dreams.”

“You can’t order me to do this.”

“Of course not! But every mind has a few dark corners, Seth, and that’s Reese’s. She desperately wants you to call insult her, tear the clothes off her, even slap her around a bit, and then overpower her and screw her. She’d weep with joy. If you can’t fit the pistol, at least try to be understanding.”

This conversation was downright unbelievable. Jordan had a string of degrees in psychology and was licensed to practice in three states. He would never gossip about another crew member’s emotional problems. So what was going on?

Seth stood up. “Captain Spears, sir, I cannot do things like that. Not hurt a woman. Not even under orders. You shouldn’t be suggesting such things. Shit, I had a kid sister I tried to rear. I watched both her and my mother dying in agony. I cannot do what you or Reese want. If I want violence, I go to the gym, pick out a guy who outweighs me by twenty kilos, and beat the hell out of him.”

“I’m not ordering you; I am merely explaining why you have problems with Dr. Platte.”

“No, sir. If she has problems with me, tell her she can ask me herself. And there will be no rough stuff.”

Seth stalked out, shaking his head. He wished he hadn’t been told all that. He really had no desire to lie with a woman of ninety-four. He took a long, soothing shower and sprayed his teeth. Then he headed for the cabin. It was dark, but light from the corridor showed him that both beds were empty, which was a huge relief. He fell into his with his clothes on and barely had time to order the lights off before he was asleep.

Day 410

Back when astronomers knew only the solar system, they tended to assume that the sun must have collected a complete set of possible planets. Now we know better. Now any wildcatter will happily quote “Blackadder’s Law” for you. Credited to Nicholas Blackadder, one of the early interstellar explorers, Blackadder’s Law states simply, “Every world is different, except that they’re all out to get you.”

Fonatelles, op. cit. 

Jordan convened yet another meeting, this time to consider whether to continue surveying Cacafuego or set course for Armada. This was the showdown, and Seth knew that his decision would be crucial, although he might well be overruled in the end. Everyone knew the stakes. He kept catching sideways glances, appraising him, wondering which way he was going to jump. He wasn’t sure of that himself.

The big change showed in the way they sat around the control room table. Although their positions were still the same, the balance of power had shifted, from the three at the far end who had brought them here: commodore, captain, navigator, to the three whose job had now begun: biologist, planetologist, prospector.

Large-scale maps of the planet filled the control room walls, showing the daylight hemisphere and the ever-moving ship’s icon. No sign of the Galactic fleet had been detected. Its quarantine beacon flew a high orbit that should be stable for centuries.

“First,” Jordan said, “a quick recap of what we know, so that we’re all on the same page. Maria?”

“Cacafuego’s high gravity is actually helping us now. It compresses the atmosphere, so
Golden Hind
can orbit close in without experiencing significant drag. We have five ferrets in orbit, and they’re mapping on a low-detail scale. Of course we would need months to analyze all the scattered land masses, but we can examine narrow strips in very fine detail. Certainly there is life down there, as Reese will tell you—advanced, multicellular life. We’ve seen forests and savannahs, and marine fauna as large as whales. No large terrestrial animals yet, which suggests that the year-long cycle of day and night inhibits their development.”

“Elephants don’t hibernate well,” Reese said.

“Or migrate across oceans.”

JC said, “Maria, run through this sideways climate scenario again for me. It drives me schizo.”

“Don’t you mean bipolar?”

A blend of groans and laughter broke the tension.

“Kill her,” Reese said.

“Ok, ok, I’m sorry. Imagine you live at the north pole. At the summer solstice, what we’d call roughly the end of June, the sun stood directly overhead all day, meaning about nineteen terrestrial hours. The heat is super-tropical, too hot for any terrestrial life other than some extremophile bacteria. Now the sun is descending in a spiral. If you’re exactly at the pole, the spiral will be symmetrical. By the equinox, the end of September, it will make a daily run around the horizon. A couple of days later it will sink out of sight for half a year and the temperature will drop far below zero.

“Now suppose Hanna lives at the equator. She sees something very different. At summer solstice the sun is due north, motionless at the horizon, or a fraction above it because of atmospheric diffraction. In this perpetual dusk, the weather is bitterly cold—arctic by our standards. Slowly the sun begins to move in increasing circles, gradually tilting so that each day it rises higher. The circles grow until, at the equinox, it rises due east of you and sets due west, passing directly overhead at noon. Then the days shrink again. Got it now?” Maria glanced around the table.

Heads nodded.

“In the spring, the sun does the reverse, except that it rises in the west and sets in the east.”

“She’s making this up,” Seth said.

“I am not!”

“I know you’re not. Tell us about the weather.”

“Loads and loads of weather! Right now the air in the northern hemisphere has spent half a year above a super-tropical ocean, which must get dangerously close to boiling near the pole. The air is hot and saturated, hurricanes are two-a-penny. In fact some of them may be close to permanent, whirling around the globe. The southern hemisphere air is super-arctic cold, and at this time of year the two bodies of air are starting to mix as the sun rises over the equator. The temperature difference could easily top a hundred degrees Celsius. You wonder there are storms?”

“And what about tides?”

“Tides? Um, I haven’t thought much about tides yet,” Maria admitted.

Seth had. “Turd is too small to raise much of a tide, but the sun must. And it must pull a lot of water to the poles at the solstices, big stationery bulges. By equinox the tidal bulges will be sweeping around the equator. So getting from one state to the other must be quite exciting at times.”