Paul Collins - Earthborn The

"You might well be. But there is value in punishing the innocent along with the guilty."

"Sir—?"

"Ever since the Age Plague when everyone over the age of twenty died, except for the chosen few, the elders, we've understood that social diseases are like those of the flesh. Slow and cunning, moving from one healthy organ to another, destroying from within. I'm afraid that once you have been exposed . .

. well, I'm sure you understand, Welkin. It's for the good of Colony."

Welkin took up the refrain. "For the good of Colony." But he didn't understand at all.

Klaxons blared. Welkin recognized the code, even though he had never heard it before. It was one that had not been heard on board Colony for one hundred and fifty years, not since the terrible days of Tau Ceti. It meant planetfall.

Welkin steadied himself against a bulkhead as the skyworld tilted. He could picture what was happening. Indeed, he should have been a part of it, would have been, if it weren't for Harry!

But it was no good thinking about that now. Harry was either dead or cast down to the lower decks, which was worse than being dead. Welkin's fate was more complicated. Even a few weeks ago he would have followed Harry in quick order, but Harlan Gibbs had intimated a different fate. A possibility of redemption. The word was tantalizing. Even coming from the cruel, thin lips of Gibbs, Welkin had found himself feeling dizzy, feeling . . . hope.

They would need cleansing teams once they landed, Gibbs explained, to exterminate the Earthborn vermin. It would be dangerous work—many would not return. But it was for the glory of Colony, and for Welkin it held the faint chance that one day he might work his way back into the good graces of the elders. After all, what else was there?

He had heard of Skyborns, condemned to the lower decks, who curled into a fetal position and died.

No physiological reason, they just died. They were Colony, born and bred. Without it, there could be no existence, no continuation, nothing . . .

"Let me out of here!" he screamed.

His voice went nowhere. He could scream forever in the cells and no guard system would hear. It was useless banging on the cell door, but he staggered around the wall and banged anyhow, in a panic reflex.

He had never been claustrophobic in his life, but locked inside a prison cell on an aging skyworld about to make planetfall somehow overcame the genetically engineered suppressive mechanisms that normally protected him. He yelled again. Better than most he knew how dangerous this landing was. The entire

skyworld could crumple like a tin can!

The light panels dimmed and flickered as the power source drained.

Welkin murmured his mantra for keep-calm:

I call upon the center of silence

Calm my senses

I call upon the center of the birth of light

Dispel the darkness of this time

So it be . . .

Repeating the mantra over and over, Welkin slid onto his bunk.

I'm going to die in here, he thought with a morbid kick. Our shields •won't last for long. They used to blow out regularly just in normal cruising mode.

Then the floor plating shuddered. A deep basso profundo rumbling grew in the bowels of the gigantic ship, grew into a full throated roar, and somehow seemed to crawl inside his head and make his skull ache. He put his feet to the floor and felt the trembling under his grip-contact boots. Colony was going down, descending toward planet-fall.

You couldn't strictly call it landing. A skyworld didn't land—it was more like worlds colliding.

Welkin watched as the metal plating buckled like a living thing. The walls crumpled in around him as massive g forces came to bear on the ship.

That's how the surface will look down there. All uneven and corrugated.

It'll be hard to walk around. But the Earth vermin manage okay. And if they can do it, we sure as Space can!

Colony had drifted between the stars far too long. It had been programmed to land on Tau Ceti III when it was a much newer skyworld, in its prime. Now it was a run-down rusting hulk that had barely made it back to the solar system.

Welkin had heard the old, sad story—about the elliptical orbit of Tau Ceti III and all the data on why the prime colonists decided to abort the mission and return through the darks of space to find another planetfall. There had been other plans, other systems and planet projects.

But landing wasn't suicide. He reminded himself that Systec— Systems and Technology—had calculated the stresses and forces facing Colony during planetfall. If they shunted all power into thrust resistors, they could achieve touchdown with minimal damage. Except for the lower decks, Welkin thought, with a twinge of guilt. Just as a man falling from a height can cushion the landing by letting his legs shatter, absorbing the impact energy, so too could Colony enhance its chances of survival by using the lower decks as a kind of giant shock absorber. Of course, at least half the lower decks would cease to exist in the blink of an eye as they pancaked together on landing. But as the elders pointed out with unimpeachable logic, that merely solved the two problems at the same time.

An elegant solution, except that Welkin had a momentary pang about Harry.

Welkin felt the slowdown from orbital speed as Colony plummeted through the stratosphere. He tried to stand, was thrown flat on his back. He dragged himself into the bunk alcove.

The ordio cut in: "All personnel are instructed to keep strictly to emergency-landing procedures. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill. Planetfall: twenty seconds and counting ..."

A handhold, something to hang on to . . .

Colony abruptly bucked, flinging him out of the bunk, slamming him into a wall. He tried to grab hold of the waste unit.

"Eighteen seconds ..."

Welkin lost his footing and tumbled across the floor, banging his head on the bunk.

"Sixteen seconds ..."

He scrabbled back to the waste unit and clung to it in white-knuckled panic. Pain shot through him in a torrent.

"Fourteen seconds ..."

The air suddenly became stiflingly hot. Power to the aerators had been siphoned elsewhere.

"Twelve seconds ..."

A slow, rending noise sliced through the ordio voice.

"LET ME OUT!"

Welkin heard the echo of his own voice, screaming.

Colony juddered.

He felt a moment of weightlessness as power to the gravity plating missed a beat. Simultaneously auxiliary thrusters cut in.

"They've done it! We're reducing drive speed." He could imagine the frantic hum of activity on the bridge right now. Captain Sobol would be standing in the center of barely controlled chaos, the one still figure in the storm. Quick shouted commands would be flying back and forth. "Fuel cells go!" "Shields at maximum!" "We are go for landing, Captain!"

"Seven seconds ..."

Welkin's mind went into a tailspin. Colony had been spying on Earth from as far away as fifty light-years out. It was no longer a planet on those database RMVs. There were no "thriving megacities"

anymore. And no "rapidly expanding technology." The whole place looked like what used to be called the third world, but where were those international organizations and caregiving agencies?

Earth was beautiful. It was all there on the monitors, the green grass, the blue hills, the oceans, even the people. Humanoid, better than that, genuine human, blood sibs, products of the gene pool. . .

He knew the history of Earth, he thought he knew the face of Earth. Now in these last seconds he gave himself up to pure fantasy. It was not his past life flashing before his eyes but the past life of his ancient homeworld.