Марта Уэллс - From a Certain Point of View

NOTES ON THE ECOSYSTEM OF HOTH

Anyone who looks at Hoth from above would be forgiven for thinking it a mostly dead ball of ice. But mostly dead would not be a problem for us. My research and exploration team arrived on what we were then calling Candidate 19.2 with enough supplies to keep us warm and fed for a year.

—

Within two weeks, and over the objections of several team members, Tev, the team geologist, and I had convinced our commander that we had to track a tauntaun over the open surface or we would never uncover the secrets of the planet. We understood why other members of the party were not interested in this, and so we offered to make the trek with just the two of us. Tev’s compact frame and fur made him the most well suited to the planet of our group, and my ecological knowledge was most necessary to the mission. Commander Habria, of course, refused to split the party, and so everyone was dragged along on our hunt.

Our working theory was that the planet could not house a rebel base on the surface. Temperatures during the night were simply too low, and any base would be visible as a massive source of heat. But the planet was geologically active, and so we hypothesized that the ecology of the planet was based on that energy, and that the large organisms must exist in subterranean ecosystems.

We packed for a ten-day excursion, and then one of the team’s troopers fired a tracking dart into the flank of a tauntaun. It soon became obvious that the conditions of the planet limited the range of the tracker, so we had to stay within three kilometers of the beast.

That, combined with the indisputable reality that we could not travel at night, soon became a clear problem. By evening the tauntaun had led us nowhere except into the middle of a glacier. I had been steadfastly ignoring the complaints of our two troopers and the milder but more worrying anxieties of Ryssle, our meteorologist, all day. But as the temperature dropped, the concern escalated.

Eventually Commander Habria called for us to make camp. I argued strongly that we would lose the tauntaun if we stopped and thus had to follow for at least another half hour. My arguments were not well received by anyone in the party, not even Tev, and so I, resigned, took one last look at the tracking screen.

There I found my deliverance…the tauntaun had stopped.

Commander Habria put together a three-person party to go and examine the tauntaun while the rest of the team made camp. The team was Anita, one of the troopers; Habria herself; and me. The other trooper’s tone changed then, from gentle but friendly complaints to legitimate worry. It was then that everyone realized that the two troopers, Xaime and Anita, had, in the short time we’d been onplanet, become a pair, and he was worried for her safety. It was touching, but also worrying. Any strong emotions could make a mission like this more deadly.

When Anita, Habria, and I arrived at the tauntaun, I was immediately distraught, though I tried not to show it. Anita, however, came right out to say it, and asked, “Is it dead?”

It certainly seemed so. The animal had simply lain down in the snow, which was now drifting on one side of it. I approached cautiously, pulling my glove off, and placed my bare hand against its un-furred muzzle. It was the temperature of ice. I said a word under my breath, only remembering that we were on an open comm when Habria chastised me for my language.

It did not make sense to me that the animal was dead. Why would this native animal be less able to survive than us? There were only three possibilities. First, that it was ill and dying when we started tracking it, which seemed extremely unlikely. Second, that it knew we were following and ran from us past exhaustion. Third, that it was not actually dead.

Now, it turned out to be true that it knew we were following it, though I would not know for some time of the extreme infrared radiation sensitivity of tauntauns. But on this night, I made a guess and then, against my instincts as a scientist and a member of my squad, I proclaimed it as if it were definitely true.

“It’s just playing dead” I said, confidently. “It will wake in the morning, when the threat has past.” No air was exiting its nostrils, no warmth was radiating from its body, but there was no one who was qualified to argue with me.

And then we went back to camp and I lay awake, knowing that, if the tauntaun did not get up in the morning, I would have to tell my commander and the rest of the team that I had lied to them and we had risked our lives in the snow for my pride.

I did my best not to show how pleased I was when the dot began to move the next morning. And in less than half an hour, we were back on the trail.

It was that second day that the animal turned sharply down a valley and then, suddenly again, into a glacial ravine.

And then the signal disappeared.

The area the signal disappeared in was treacherous, with sudden jagged slants of broken ice that were only visible from a few feet away, but finally we found a crack from which warm air was rising.

This was how we found our first tauntaun family group, and the future location of Echo Base.

—

A keystone species is one that isn’t just part of an ecosystem, but helps create it and holds it together. Like the sapphire ice worm on Hoth. These worms can burrow through miles of glacier in search of food, and they leave behind small channels, smaller than the width of my finger. But as warm air rushes up and out after being heated by the interior of the planet, these tiny tunnels widen. Over decades, or even centuries, they become massive. They become a home for the entire subterranean ecosystem of Hoth. They build their world and have no idea that they do it.

This is how I felt. I came to Hoth to study this world’s life, and while I did it, a base formed around me. I had found a way to do what I loved while also helping the Rebellion, but that didn’t make me a soldier. In fact, despite my efforts, I feel a quiet contempt for those reckless souls who are here only to kill and be killed.

Not long ago, I watched such a man hop on a tauntaun as dusk rushed over the base. I turned to my commander and said, “He’ll need to closely monitor the animal’s vitals if they both want to make it back alive.” My commander then repeated my concern to him, louder, and abbreviated, “Your tauntaun’ll freeze before you reach the first marker.” The man had nothing kind to say in reply, but that didn’t stop him from saying something. When the man returned, and I discovered how he’d made it through the night, I felt sick. Had he even noticed the warning signs as the creature froze to death? Had he even cared? The tauntaun was another casualty, a natural creature conscripted to be a soldier in a war it couldn’t understand. At least he had saved his friend, but the Rebellion’s lack of respect for this planet still had me quietly seething.

We all have our blind spots and our indulgent ignorances. None of us can know everything, and that is more true of me than anyone. I do not know how to win a war, but I find myself also no longer able to care. Alderaan tore a hole in me. I didn’t just lose faith in the Empire; to some extent, I lost faith in my species. That was not a thing done by evil, it was a thing done by us, and I will never forgive us. I will never be able to see my own face in the mirror the same way. And so maybe I have stopped looking. As this base formed around me, I became less and less a part of the Rebellion—not because I don’t feel like their mission is worthwhile, but because I feel less and less like a part of the human species.

Only now am I finally accepting what I’ve known since the moment we found out the Empire was coming.

When we found out General Dodonna had been killed, I stayed on Hoth. I stayed after Ryssle disappeared from our camp one night and never came back. When the Rebellion reassigned my team to a new planet, I convinced them I had more work to do here. And just now, when my evac shuttle assignment was called, I stayed. I am sick with this knowledge, but I cannot stop knowing it.