Kent Patterson - Cradle and All

Illustration by Steve Cavallo.

Rock-a-bye-baby time and this weird planet sure as hell grew some mean tree tops. Orem Paige stood on the edge of the Amaterasu Arboreal Region Exploratory Habitat and peered at the jungle below. Called the “cradle” by everyone in it, the habitat looked like a bright orange air mattress some hundred meters square. On top, it had a transparent dome which served as a control and communications center. Beneath that, the “canvas condo” held research labs and living quarters. Inflated to slightly higher than atmospheric pressure, the cradle rode on top of the jungle canopy like a rubber raft rides on the ocean, its weight distributed so widely that the trees hardly bowed beneath.

To the west, Orem could see nothing but tree tops, undulating in the wind like a gray-green surf, a smudge on the far horizon all he could see of the distant mountains. They named the planet Amaterasu after the Japanese sun goddess. Appropriate, at least for this part. Very hot.

The trees shimmered in the rainbow of sunlight reflecting in the superfine mesh net which protected the cradle. The net kept all the alien creepy crawlies outside—especially needle bugs.

To the east, he could see low black clouds reminding him that the great granddaddy of all hurricanes was working up strength to strike. The cradle would rock, all right, and down would come baby, cradle and all. Unless Orem stopped it.

“You ready, or are you contemplating applying for a desk job?” Suzanne “Suze” Harrin said, walking up from behind. He could feel her footsteps rippling the cradle fabric.

Orem turned around. Like everyone in the cradle, Suze wore a bioisolation suit with its own air supply, her name printed in large letters on her left breast. Her suit was orange on the left side, white on the right, his the reverse. No one knew why. Through her transparent mask, she made a quick air kiss. He glanced around to see if anyone was looking, then returned the kiss. They’d been bunk mates for three months now, and were still a little silly.

“OK. Time for me to make like a monkey.”

“They don’t use monkeys for off-world work,” she said. “Endangered species and all. Too valuable.”

“No monkeys here anyway. I miss them. And the birds. When I trained back in the Amazon Park, the jungle was thick with birds. You couldn’t hear yourself speak for the squawking.” A drop of sweat stung his eye. He couldn’t wipe his brow because of the mask. This jungle was like a steam chest, worse than the Amazon, though nothing up here to what it must be on the ground below.

“Well, give this place a billion years and twice as much oxygen, there’ll be birds.”

“Long time to wait.”

“Good Mormons are supposed to be patient.”

“I’m not a Mormon. OK, so my parents are, but it’s not hereditary.”

“I think it’s cute they named you for your home town.”

“Could have been worse. Could have been Moroni.”

Orem reached down, picked up his limb climber robos and hung them from his belt. They looked like spiders, long legs with bodies the size of a fist. With the robos in place, he bent over to pick up a roll of carbon fiber cable.

“Permission to exit the nets?” Going outside the nets without a buddy watching from inside was absolutely tabu.

“Granted.”

Orem unfastened the exit, climbed through the net, then turned to catch more rolls of cable as Suze handed them out. Now he perched on the edge of the cradle, the fabric sinking under his feet like a soft mattress. Cables ran everywhere, holding the cradle in place. He’d put most of them in, and hadn’t enjoyed the job. But if the satellite pictures didn’t lie, the coming storm made the average Earth hurricane look like a summer breeze. The cradle needed all the reinforcements it could get.

He looked down. Some trees had leaves as big as bath towels, long tough rubbery things which felt like plastic. Others had narrow leaves, or long whip-shaped ones. The biologists hadn’t had time to sort out the species. Near the ground, the trunks bulged like beer bottles. On a tree in Utah a bulge like that would have indicated a disease. African baobab trees bulged too, so fat trees weren’t too odd. What was odd was that here all the jungle species bulged. Orem couldn’t see the ground, a morass of mud and rot that never saw the sun.

Just as well he couldn’t see it. Or smell it. The cradle rocked in the wind, the cables vibrating like guitar strings. Holding one cable in his hands, cautiously he stepped out on another, edging his way down to where the leaves thinned out and the tree trunks grew thick.

“Watch for needle bugs!” Suze shouted.

Sure, tell the man on the flying trapeze to watch for rattlesnakes. Orem glanced around, eyeing the leaves. Bugs everywhere. The biologists went nuts trying to classify them. Whole armies of little ones made brown splotches on the leaves. Bigger ones ate the little ones. One had an orange spot on its back. Or maybe its head, Orem wasn’t sure. One species burrowed deep into leaves and ate out the insides, leaving just the outer transparent skin like windows on a bus.

A branch glittered wet in the sun. Orem examined the edges of the wet spot carefully. Finally he spotted a spit toad pretending to be a large wart on the tree bark. Spit toads spat out the sticky lining of their stomach, waited for some poor stupid bug to get caught, then flipped the stomach back in again. Harmless, but disgusting. Anyway, no needle bugs. Looking for a gray-green bug on gray-green leaves was like looking for a black cat in a coal bin, and he had work to do.

He selected a tree a good five meters thick. Attaching a cable lead to one of the robos, he sent the robo scurrying about the trunk and back, then locked the cable in a solid loop. One down.

After you stopped thinking about needle bugs, the heat, the storm coming, and how high above the ground you were, the job wasn’t bad. Orem placed five more cables, returned for five more, and placed four.

The wind sighed around him. Leaves rippled about his face. Sunlight flickered over his orange and white suit.

“Orem! Freeze!” Suze shouted. Shocked, Orem froze. He felt the cables tremble as Suze ran up behind him.

So what was going on? He would like to look around, but didn’t move. Slowly he saw the claw end of Suze’s collecting stick glide past his face.

Something scurried in the leaves. The collecting stick shot after it.

“Got it!” Suze said. “Needle bug.” She waved the creature in front of his face. About half as long as his hand, the needle bug had a segmented body and six legs. Each leg ended in a round sticky cup, just the thing for clinging to plastic trees or anything else unlucky enough to come within its grasp. Unlike Earth insects, the needle bug’s middle section bristled with long hairs to help it breathe in the oxygen poor atmosphere. It had no face, not even a mouth, just two eye spots and a thin needle between them.

The bug writhed angrily, trying to escape. Suddenly the needle jumped forward, shooting a drop of venom half a meter into the air.

“Orem, I told you to be careful. Losing her bunkmate could give a woman a bad reputation.”

“Thanks, I guess. I don’t understand how you see those damned things. Trained biologist’s eye, I suppose. Anyway, there’s one more cable. You’d better get behind the net.”

Suze left, leaving Orem to place the next cable.

The wind worsened. Huge leaves threshed up and down, popping like flags. This cable had to be placed both lower and farther out. He had to climb limb to limb monkey-fashion, cursing and dragging the cable.