Wildcatter

“When ISLA’s report on GK79986B came out,” Meredith said, “everyone got very excited and also furious that Mighty Mite had cheated and jumped the gun. Galactic rammed us through our final prep in record time and we left orbit just a few days after you did. The scuttlebutt was that Galactic had told Old Doddery not to spare the horses. So he didn’t. We squandered a lot of ferrets on the way-I mean we didn’t wait for them all to return, so our navigators could choose the safest possible haven to aim for in the next jump. That’s standard procedure, of course, but what I heard was that as soon as one came back with readings that met minimum safety standards, we took that route and jumped, abandoning any probes that returned later. We entered orbit around Hesperides on our Day 354, right about Hesperides’ northern summer solstice. I don’t know what that date would be by your ship’s calendar, but we knew we had won, because there was no sign of you, the Mighty Mite Pirates.”

Seth said, “We estimated that the solstice had been about our Day 380, more than a month ago now. Either we hit more time slip or you beat us by about a month and a half. Your commodore must have cut quite a few corners. When Golden Hind files its report, ISLA may take a hard look at his log. And he’s going to face very hard questioning about abandoning you.”

“I have enough troubles of my own right now, thank you,” she said. “We were disappointed by the axial tilt, but some sideways worlds have been profitable, and we were determined to stake it before you did. Then our scanners turned up the flower pots. Know what I mean?”

“We called them chimneys.”

“We sent atmospheric drones down to overfly a couple of the colonies and we saw pseudo-mammalian fauna around them. We were thrown into a tizzy. Now we call them centaurs and in my opinion they’re sentient.”

Oh! “Not just semi-sentient?”

“We weren’t sure then, but since I’ve got to know them better, I’m convinced they’re sentient.”

“They use tools? Or they have language?”

Meredith shrugged. “Both. GenRegs are vague on this topic, as I’m sure you know. Taken literally, their definitions would qualify crows or parrots as intelligent. People are still arguing how sentient gorillas were, yet ISLA blithely expects a few stressed people to make a correct decision on species no one has ever seen before, and get it right first time.”

“ISLA wants to give any possible sentients the benefit of the doubt.”

“That’s not the way big corporations think. We sent down three drones in all, and every one of them ran afoul of the weather. You can avoid the obvious storms, but there’s a lot of CAT about, clear air turbulence.”

Seth recalled that Commodore Duddridge, in his beacon message, had claimed to have sent down “a lot” of drones, not just three. Had he lied to his own shuttle crew, so they would not be put off attempting a landing, or to the beacon, hoping to scare Golden Hind away when it arrived? He had never mentioned the chimneys or centaurs. His view of the truth was patchy and astigmatic.

“Doddery called for volunteers. Up jumped a dozen suicidal idiots. He picked me and I chose my crew. The three of us came downside on Day 360. We chose this site for several reasons, one being that it doesn’t get as hot as most of the northern hemisphere landmasses, yet it isn’t what on Earth we’d call arctic. Here the equator is the arctic, but there seems to be no permanent ice this far north. It had a fairly typical colony of flower … chimneys, you called them. As usual, they were close to the sea and a river, although I suspect now the river may be incidental. The drones’ videos had warned us that the estuary terrain was virtually impassable, but they had also shown some distributary channels like this one. We hoped that they might act as freeways for us wobbly bipeds.”

Meredith paused to take another sip of ice water. In her dehydrated and half-starved condition, she was over-reacting to the stim shot, talking fast, going hyper. Weeks of loneliness were showing, too. She might eventually collapse, and then how would Seth ever get her aboard Niagara when it returned? She ought to be in a hospital bed cocooned in IV tubes.

Seth said, “Of course you chose to land well back from the chimneys in case they turned out to be a housing project and your shuttle scared a tribe of sentients into starting a religion.”

“You guessed it. ISLA would have bust our pretty little asses. We didn’t want to waste any time, though. We knew the weather wasn’t reliable. As soon as we landed, Dylan Guinizelli and I suited up and headed out. It was a gorgeous day, all blue sky and fluffy clouds. The sun was very low and not oppressive. I really wished I could take my helmet off and smell such a beautiful world. We headed seaward, collecting, dictating, commenting, just like a school field trip.