Starborne

“So I did. But just the two of us was enough for Titan and Ganymede and Callisto,” Huw replies. “We should be able to manage things pretty well by ourselves here too. We don’t need to put anyone else at risk. Look here, old brother, let’s send a probe down today and take some samples. And then you and I will descend and expose ourselves to whatever spooks may be in charge of things down there, unless there are no spooks, in which case we can begin to assume that even though Planet A flamed out for us, there is no reason to expect the same effects everyplace we happen to wander. What do you say, captain-sir, old brother?”

“Let me think about it,” the year-captain says.

In fact the year-captain most passionately wants to visit the surface of Planet B, and has been in the grip of that passion since long before the Wotan ’s latest emergence from nospace. He has been fighting against the idea, though, because he knows that his desire is a purely selfish one, and he feels that he’s had his quota of selfishness for the time being.

Obviously the planet is useless for the purposes of colonization. The year-captain knows that already, even if most of his fellow voyagers don’t. It has some bare possibility of being suitable for human habitation, yes, but the year-captain is certain even without first-hand on-site data that life down there would be endlessly difficult, uncomfortable, and challenging for them. A certain degree of challenge is a valuable stimulus to the growth of civilization, he realizes, but there is a point beyond that at which the human spirit is simply crushed by overwhelming struggle. That is what probably would happen here, the year-captain thinks. Better to write the place off without bothering with it further, and go in search of some other, less difficult, world.

And yet — and yet—

A planet, a unique unknown planet right out there within his grasp, a planet that beyond much doubt has given rise tosome sort of life-form completely beyond human experience—

He wants it. He can’t deny it to himself, not after the battle to win the right to take part in reconnaissance missions outside the ship. And, in the end, he allows Huw’s use of Giovanna’s variant on the angel theory to sway his decision. They do need to find out whether some omnipotent external force has decided to block their access to the worlds of space, and a landing on Planet B would shed a little light on that. Might shed some, anyway. A positive finding in that area might help to compensate for the letdown that people are going to feel when Planet B fizzles out, as the year-captain is sure it will, as a potential settlement site. So he authorizes the sending of one of the drone probes to collect a little more direct information about conditions down there, and lets it be known that a follow-up manned expedition will be the next step, if warranted by the drone’s findings.

Huw, operating the drone by remote control, puts it in an orbit a thousand kilometers outside Planet B’s murky atmosphere and does some infrared eyeballing to get a clue to what’s underneath the cloud layer. His cameras are capable of peeling away thicker fog than that, and they pierce right through, providing him with new mystifications.

“Look there,” he tells the year-captain. “Those hot lines everywhere. It’s like a big ball of twine down there. Or a lot of rubber bands wound round and round the whole place.”

“Vines, I think,” the year-captain says.

“A planet entirely tied up in a wrapping of vines? Vines two hundred kilometers thick?”

“We’ll need to take a closer look at it,” the year-captain says.

“I already have.” Huw kicks the imaging magnification up a couple of levels and cuts in an ultraviolet filter. “Now we’re looking just below the surface. You see the dark lines between the hot ones?”

“Tunnels?” the year-captain suggests.

“Tunnels, yes, I’d say.” Huw indicates the infrared readings. “And things moving in the tunnels, no?”

The year-captain peers closely at the screen’s blue-green surface. Dots of hot purple light, the purple indicating a temperature different from the temperature of the tightly wound lines, are slowly traversing the long darknesses that they have identified as tunnels.

“How big, would you guess?” he asks.

Huw shrugs. “Twenty meters long? Fifty? Big things, anyway. Very big. I don’t think we have a civilization down there, old brother, but I think we do have something.”

“Which requires investigation.”

“Absolutely.”

Huw grins. The year-captain does not. They understand each other, though. They will be shameless. Irresponsible, even. This is a useless world. But they want to see what’s down there; and so they will. They have earned the right. Curiosities must be satisfied. And — who knows? — they may even be able to answer some questions that very much need to be answered before the expedition can proceed to its next destination.