J McKenna: Slave Planet

“Now, just like you, I didn’t come all this way to meekly go home without seeing what awaits us down below. But if we’re going to do this, it’s going to be done by the book. We’re going to triple-check everything. We’re going to abort if anything, and I mean anything, goes wrong. I’m not going to risk the crew or the humanoids or even the smallest life on the planet.”

“We wouldn’t want to either, captain,” Greta said, grateful that Kate seemed to be leaning toward approving the landing.

“I want us to find the best spot for a landing,” Kate continued. “It must allow plenty of room for a soft landing. It should be well away from a village, but perhaps close enough to hike to in order to observe the residents. It needs to provide camouflage for the bobsled. If we can’t find such a site, we don’t go. Before we launch, I want a bio-probe sent down to the landing site to check for microbes, poisonous plants, vicious animals—you name it. If we find anything like that, we don’t go.”

Heads nodded. They were like children, trying to convince Mom to let them walk to a neighbor’s house. We’ll be good, we’ll stay on the sidewalk, we won’t talk to strangers!

Kate looked each of the three away team members in their eyes, telling them silently how important this is. “OK. Let’s get busy.”

The next few hours were a blur of activity. Sites were explored, then rejected for one reason or another. Finally, the crew narrowed down the list to three possible landing sites. The captain went over each site carefully, looking for flaws, dangers.

“Site One is about 10 klicks from this village, on the other side of a forest,” Greta was explaining, using the shorthand for kilometers. “We can put in at night, hide the ship, then hike over and set up a base camp near the edge of the woods.”

Kate shook her head. “They’ll spot you coming in. When you fire your thrusters, you’ll light up the sky.”

“Maybe we could come in ‘hot’,” she said, then instantly regretted her words.

“That’s the kind of thinking that will get this mission cancelled,” Kate shot back. “You either land by the book or you don’t land at all, got it?”

Greta nodded, chagrined.

“Here’s another possibility that solves the problem of being seen as we land,” Jorja put in, anxious to move on.

“Site Two,” Greta picked up, pointing to the topography map, “is here, at the beginning of this mountain range. See, these two ridges rise out of the desert, then join to form a larger ridge. At the junction, the woods begin. We can fly in and land safely on the sand between the two ridges, then slid up to near the treeline. Using harnesses, we can drag the bobsled into the woods for cover.”

Greta handed Kate a photo of the site. “On the other side of this range, across this plain, is a small village. We figure we can climb the ridge here—it’s not too high at this point—and set up base camp near the top. With long-range scanners and binoculars, we can observe the people without being spotted. The village would be about five kilometers away.”

“What about the U.T.?” Kate asked. The Universal Translator was a key part of this mission. The U.T., often pronounced “Ute,” was a modification of the devices typically found on Earth that travelers use when visiting another country. About the size of a deck of playing cards, the device instantly translates speech into the desired language. Of course, all of Earth’s languages have been studied and recorded. Dealing with a brand new language requires a considerable learning curve. The U.T. must be allowed to record at least an hour of continuous language in order to formulate a working translation. The away team would have to get close enough to place microphone-transmitters—a risky and dangerous business.

Greta knew that Kate wanted to hear how they’d solve this problem. “Jorja has manufactured some ‘rocks’ in which we can hide the mics,” she said. “Two of us will sneak up in the middle of the night and place them close enough to listen in. Then we can just sit back and record.”

“Sounds risky. How can you avoid being spotted?”

“We’ve talked about that. There’s a ravine here,” Greta pointed to the photo, “that will allow us to get pretty close. Then we’ll come out here and place a rock near the western edge of the village, near this road.”

“You’d be exposed for a hundred yards or more. That’s too risky. You’ll stand out like sore thumbs.”

“Um, we have a solution for that as well, sir,” Beth spoke up for the first time. “We’ll simply disguise ourselves as natives, out collecting wood or something.”

Kate’s brow furrowed. “That means—” She couldn’t finish.

“Yes, we’ll have to be naked or dressed in animal skins. We’ll have to make our bodies look, um, more native.”

Kate laughed out loud at the image that created in her mind. “You’re going to add hair?”

“Only enough to get by at night, from a distance,” Greta added quickly. “A strip here, a patch there. We’ll put them on just before we plant the rocks. We don’t expect to be seen at all. This will just be an added precaution.”

The captain nodded. They certainly had thought this out. “OK, let’s check out the third site.”

That site was soon rejected for the same reasons as the first—it was too exposed. Kate gave them approval to further explore Site Two.

A bioprobe was launched in the middle of the night. The bioprobes are much smaller than regular probes and thus are harder to spot. Just a few hundred meters up, a small chute deploys, allowing it to drift to the ground.

The probe was aimed well. It drifted across the sand and landed in a tree about a mile from where the away team hoped to drag their bobsled. “Signal coming in,” Greta called out. She scanned the reports. “No poisonous plants, no microbes and no dangerous animals or insects in the immediate vicinity,” she announced after several seconds. “I’ll continue to scan.”

A sigh of relief went up from Beth and Jorja. Even the captain nodded. “All right. I’ll call it in. Looks like we have a ‘go.’”

NASA was as excited about the upcoming launch as the away team. Hunter wanted a full report as soon as the team touched down, then regular reports every three hours. “You have no idea of the magnitude of the news here at home,” he gushed. “It’s on the news every day. They’ve started a cable channel just for the Letanya . Why, there was a baby girl born right here in Houston yesterday and the parents named her Letanya—can you believe it?”

Kate had trouble understanding all the hoopla. They were just doing their jobs.

Greta took over the preparation of the shuttle and crew. Kate and Allyson stood by like mother hens, nervously looking for loopholes in their planning. Greta rolled her eyes at her team when the commanders weren’t looking.

All too soon, they were ready to go. They had food and water for a week, though the mission was to last just three days. Beth inserted a subcutaneous tracking module the size of a match into the upper arms of each of them. It would allow the Letanya to pinpoint their positions at all times.

Each woman carried a U.T. and a spare radio in the pockets of their overalls for triple redundancy. The rest of the gear had been loaded and double-checked.

Kate handed each woman a small phase pistol, to be used only in emergencies, she warned them. To ensure that the pistols did not fall into the hands of the natives, they included a unique design. A small square halfway down the grip on both sides accepted the middle finger of a user, whether using the phaser left-handed or right. A scanner read the fingerprint. If it didn’t match the assigned user, the phaser remained inert. If a member of the away team needed to switch weapons for some reason, she would have to hold the gun, then punch in a five-digit code at the base of the grip to reprogram the scanner.