Test 7
by David Newkirk
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
We flew over the surface, headed towards a forest of short things with purple trunks and black leaves. There was a permanent night if we kept going long enough in that direction. Janus was tidally locked, forever keeping one face towards Bradbury. Like all tidally locked planets and its mythical namesake, Janus had two faces. One side was in perpetual night. On that side, brilliant stars shone against a blackness that was somehow more than black, reflecting off endless fields of ice.
The other side was in perpetual daylight. On that side, Bradbury was an angry heat lamp baking the mostly barren desert as it shone through the constant clouds. The two sides were locked in an eternal stalemate. A continuous wind, never less than about twenty kilometers an hour, flowed from the dayside to the night and ultimately back. The wind sent moisture towards the day side and heat towards the night side.
The truth was that the bugs might have been a bit generous with their green designation for Janus. The only part that was truly habitable, or habitable-ish, anyway, was the ribbon, a sixty-kilometer belt of permanent sunset between the day and night faces. In the ribbon, streams flowed at places, feeding shallow, icy lakes and geysers that broke the surface. An ecosystem of sorts flourished, but insects were the most complex life form that had evolved.
We were headed close to the night edge of that belt. The ribbon wasn’t entirely static. When the local weather pushed the heat towards the night side enough, new areas of vegetative growth could open. It was the closest Janus came to seasons.
“We’re here, Royce,” Avery said. The flyer’s exhaust kicked up loose rock as she landed a hundred meters or so from a field of vegetation.
We were close enough to the night side that Bradbury’s light was a twilight. Looking nightward, several of the brighter stars were visible. The ground was cold, and bits of frost clung in places. This spot was ice-covered until recently, I thought. The “corn” was dense, a field of deep purple stocks with blackish flowers. And, importantly for me, little bugs hopping from flower to flower that might have passed for a bee if bees were purple and alien.
It wasn’t lost on me that this was the farthest from home that I’d ever be. Here, on some miserable planet that had a useful bug. One that didn’t have a species name yet, so “Vang” absolutely, positively would be in the taxonomic designation somewhere. Thank you, miserable planet. Now let the farmer girl make you into somewhere that someone who isn’t me might want to live.
Considering where I was, going after bugs with a net seemed low-tech. Still, it worked better than anything else. I had to push stalks aside to make my way into the field. From there, it was simple. Catch a bug, transfer it to the portable insectarium, repeat. One little buggy, two little buggies...
“This air is damn near breathable near ground level,” Avery said over the comm. She was near the edge of the cornfield, sampling the atmosphere. “These things are incredibly efficient at photosynthesis.”
Whatever, I thought, going deeper and deeper in. If I could find a hive, great, but until then, three little buggies, four little buggies...
I had felt small earthquakes back home, but the feeling didn’t register with me right away. It did when I saw a crack appearing by the lander.
“Vang!” Avery shouted, running. “Flyer! Go now!”
I turned and ran. The thick corn slowed me down. Too late. The Flyer was teetering as the crack continued to open. Then — gone. Avery stopped, right outside the edge of the corn. I heard her on her comm unit, oddly calm. “Mayday base, Mayday. Extraction urgently required, coordinates...”
The propellant blew. I had seen explosions like this in movies. But what I felt wasn’t the same as watching a holo. The heat reached a split second before the rock and debris, which were essentially shrapnel in Janus’s lower gravity. I heard Laney scream. The corn shielded me from the worst, and my oxygen module took a lot of the remainder of the impact. It took me a second to realize the hiss was oxygen, rapidly bleeding into Janus’s thin air. Another second, and I realized that something was stuck in my shoulder. Not good. Not good.
I grabbed the hose of the breather, squeezing. The hiss slowed. That won’t last, I thought. Laney, outside of the corn, was down and not moving. Larger chunks of the lander lay near her, the apparent source of the wounds. She was in bad shape, an arm hanging at an angle that arms weren’t meant to have, blood pouring from her leg. She wasn’t going to make it. She wasn’t moving, barely breathing.
“Make a choice; make a choice,” a sing-song voice somewhere in my head said.
I wasn’t going to die here. I grabbed Laney’s breather, pulling it from her limp body. It was also hissing, but more slowly. Her unit might just make it long enough for rescue.
And then she moved. A moan. A gasp. She pulled herself towards the corn and the ground-level oxygen. “Call... base...” she gasped. “Breather—”
The hell with that, I thought. You were the one that said you wanted to live here. Zero or one of us will make it. Not two. Try the corn air, lady.
I started to reach for her comm unit. Somehow, my arm wouldn’t move. Or anything else. I tried to move again. I was somehow frozen in place, totally immobile. What the hell?
There was shimmering on the horizon. Unnaturally large, seeming to take most of the sky, I saw the face. The face of an alien. Janus’s surface seemed to fade out, and I realized that I saw ship walls all around me. It looked for all the world like what I remembered of the Cronus. I was somehow held against the wall. The shimmering was in front of me now, and I again saw the alien. Where was I?
“End Test 7,” a voice said.
I remembered the bugs in glass jars from my childhood. Specimens for study. Shake the jar, see what happens.
I realized that I had never left the ship.
* * *
The alien sighed, or as close to a sigh as it could make. Maybe someday, it thought, I’ll get back home. I’ll get off this clap-trap imitation of a real starship that these “humans” have built. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll even release it back into normal space and let it go where it was headed. It’s not like they’ll remember.
In the meantime, it had work to do. “Evaluation of Test 7. In this simulation, the human subject ‘Vang’ again shows the rigidity, arrogance and lack of empathy originally believed to typify the species. However, the human subject ‘Laney’ continues to show adaptability, ingenuity, and compassion. Test 8 will alter survival parameters by adding additional subjects and additional options. Quarantine of this species should continue pending completion of testing and decision of the hive. End interim report 7.”
It sighed again. “Commence Test 8.”
* * *
“How are we this morning, champ?” said the stocky man in the overly-crisp white U.N. medical uniform. “I’m Dr. McAllister.” It took me a second to respond. The nightmare from last night was still bouncing around in my mind.
Copyright © 2022 by David Newkirk
