Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF

“Arne ought to be here.” She was serious, with no sarcasm. “He’s the terraformer, more expert than we are. He’s missing the thrill of his life.”

Elation bubbled in her voice.

“We feel like gods. Descending to the dead world with the fire of life. Pepe says we ought to head back to the Moon while we can, but I won’t — I can’t — give up the actual landing.”

Beginning the final descent on the other side of Earth, they were out of contact while I bit my nails for an hour.

“Down safe!” She was exuberant when we heard her again. “Pepe set us down on the west shore of this Kenyan sea. A splendid day with a high sun and a great view across a neck of the water to a wall of dark cliffs and the slopes of a new volcanic mountain almost as tall as Kilimanjaro. A tower of smoke is climbing out of the cone. The sky above us is blue as the sea, though maybe not for long. I see a storm cloud rising in the west.”

She was silent for a moment.

“Another thing — a very odd thing.

Landing on its tail, the plane stands tall. From the cockpit we can see far out across the sea. Most of it calm, there’s an odd little patch of whitecaps. Odd because they’re moving toward us, with no sign of wind anywhere else. “I can make out—” Her voice broke off. I heard the quick catch of her breath and Pepe’s muffled exclamation.

“Those whitecaps!” Her voice came back, lifted sharply. “Not whitecaps at all. They’re something — something alive!”

She must have moved away from the microphone. Her voice faded, though I made out a few words of Pepe’s.

“…impossible… nothing green, no photosynthesis, no energy for our kind of life… we’ve got to know…”

I caught no more till at last Tanya was back at the mike.

“Something swimming!” Her voice was quick and breathless. “Swimming at the surface. We can’t see much except the splashing, but it must have descended from something that survived the impact. Pepe doubts that any large creature could live with so little oxygen, but anaerobic life did evolve on the old ocean floors. The black plumes, the giant tube worms, the bacteria that fed them—”

I heard Pepe’s muted voice. The mike clicked, went dead, stayed dead while Dian and Arne came up to listen with me.

“Something has cut them off!” Dian shudderend. “An attack by those swimming things?”

“No way to know, but I did try to warn them.” Arne must have repeated that a dozen times as the hours went by. “The planet simply isn’t ready for us. It may never be.”

In the hangars we had a dozen spare space planes that had ferried freight or workmen to the Moon. I suggested that we should think of a rescue flight.

“We’d be fools to go.” Arne shook his head. “If they need help, they need it now, not next week. Our duty is to stay here, gather the data we can, record it for a generation that may have a better chance.”

“I’m afraid,” Dian whispered. “I wish—”

“Wish for what?” Arne snapped. “There’s nothing we can do. Nothing but wait.”

We waited forever, till the mike clicked at last and we heard Pepe.

“Navarro here, on board alone. Tanya’s been off the plane for hours. In her breathing mask, collecting whatever she can. I’ve begged her to come back before her air runs out, but she’s fascinated with those swimmers. We watched one crawling up out of the water. Something like a red octopus, though she says it looks no kin to any octopus that ever existed before the impact. A mass of thick, blood-red coils. It splayed itself on the beach and lay still in the sun.

“She wondered if it might have some kind of photosynthetic symbiote in its blood. Something red instead of green, that feeds it on solar energy. I don’t see any way for her to tell, but she’s still out there with her binoculars and her video and her sample bucket.

“I’ve begged her to get back with what she has, but she always needs a few more minutes. She keeps working towards the beach. The red things are amphibians, she says. A dozen of them out there now. An unexpected life form that she thinks could be a problem later. Leave that for later, I told her, but she keeps slogging on. The beach is mud, silt washed down off the hills in the west. She says the things are digging in it, maybe for something they eat. She wants to see. “But now—”

His voice lifted and stopped while he must have been watching. I heard no more till it came back, still begging her. She had gone too far. The mud was deeper than it looked. Her air had run low. She could watch the creatures from the cockpit till she knew them better. Faintly, I caught her answer.

“Just one more minute.”

For a long-seeming time I heard nothing at all.

“‘One more minute.’ He echoed her words.

“It’s close to night. That storm’s rolling down on us. The wind’s getting up. A few raindrops already — Stop, Tanny! Stop!” His voice went high. “Mind the mud.”

“Give me just another minute.” Her radio voice, so faint I hardly heard it. “These creatures — they’re a new evolution. We’ve got to know what they are. Never mind the risk.”

“I mind it,” he called again to her. “Tanny, please—”

He stopped to hear something from her that I failed to catch. For a time he was silent again, except for the rush of his rapid breath.

“Navarro again.” His voice was back, bitterly resigned. “She can’t resist those red monsters. At first they sprawled flat, soaking up the sun, but now they’re moving. One jumped at another. The other dodged and sprang to meet it. Now-”

He stopped to watch and shout another warning.

“The things are really quite a show. They look legless, maybe boneless, but amazingly active and quick. A riddle, if they need no oxygen. But I wish—” He yelled again, and waited. “They’re a crazy tangle of long red tentacles roiling the mud. Fighting? Mating? She has to know. Binoculars now, then the camera. She’s too close. Getting data, but I don’t like this mud. Maybe bottomless, with no plant life to hold it. Her feet are sinking in it. She’s stumbling, struggling—

“My God!” He was screaming into the microphone. “Hold still! I’m coming.”

“Don’t!” Her voice came thinly, desperate yet oddly calm. “Arne, please! Get back to the Moon. Report what you can. Don’t mind me. There’ll be another clone.”

I heard the whir and clang of the lock, and then nothing at all.

The three of us left at Tycho lived out our natural lives with no more news from Earth. The robots slept again, a million years perhaps; we had no clocks that ran so long. The computers woke them when the sensors found the Earth grown green enough. We grew up again, listening to the robots and the holos, struggling once more to learn the roles we must play.

“Meat robots!” Arne was always the critic. “Created and programmed to play God for old DeFalco.”

“Hardly gods.” Tanya was bright and beautiful and sure of nearly everything. “But at least alive.”

“Meat copies.” Arne mocked her.

“Copies of the holo ghosts in the tank.”

“More than copies, too,” Tanya said. “Genes aren’t everything. We’re ourselves.”

“Maybe,” Arne muttered. “But still slaves of old DeFalco and his idiot plan.”

“So what?” Tanya wore a thick sheaf of sleek black hair, and she tossed it scornfully back. “It’s the reason we’re here. I expect to do my bit.”

“Maybe you, but I’ve heard my father talk.”

We all knew his father’s image in the tanks. A bronze-bearded giant, Dr Arne Linder had been a distinguished geologist back before the impact. We’d read his books in Dian’s library.