Starship: Second Flight

By Thom Whalen

The scout known as Red has been travelling for fourteen years on a starship with other scouts and crew since she was eighteen. The ship’s complement was reduced from forty to thirty-two at the first star they reached. When they arrive at a habitable planet orbiting their second star, they find structures that must have been built by intelligent aliens. But the aliens are nowhere to be found. Red and her friends soon discover that, though this planet seems hospitable, it is far more dangerous than it appears.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thom Whalen
• Release date: Jan 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781777132354

Thom Whalen

Thom Whalen studied experimental psychology at UCSD (B.A.), UBC (M.A.) and Dalhousie University (Ph.D.). After working for the Government of Canada conducting research on the human factors of computer networks for thirty years, he retired to begin a new career writing fiction.If you wish to send him email, contact information is available at http://thomwhalen.com/ He eagerly awaits comment on his stories.

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CHAPTER ONE

I was thirty-two years old when our starship reached the second star on our grand tour. Or maybe I was still thirty-one. We don’t keep track of birthdays on board because we don’t use the same calendar as on Earth, so I wasn’t sure if I’d passed my most recent one or not. If not, it had to be soon, but I didn’t care much. Whether I was almost thirty-two or had just turned thirty-two made no difference. I still felt ancient.

I’d been living on this disk three-stories tall and two hundred meters in diameter for fourteen years. I’d boarded along with thirty-nine other people, but there weren’t forty of us on board anymore. Only thirty-two of us were still alive. Our first captain was murdered in the first year in space; two scouts died on the surface of the first planet we explored seven years ago; and six scouts were killed in an attempted mutiny afterward. Oh, and we had one child born in space, which was never supposed to happen, but there you go. When you’re exploring the stars, you learn to expect the impossible.

Anyway, my point is, when you can’t have more than forty friends for the rest of your life and you lose nine of them before you reach twenty-five, you’re going to feel like you’ve lived a lifetime by the age of thirty. Or the age of thirty-two to be almost precise.

But I wasn’t as old as my family back on Earth. Our first star, Theta Eight-Seventeen was twenty light years from Earth and Epsilon Ninety-Nine was an additional fifty-three light years beyond that, meaning that the Earth was now seventy-three years older than when we left. How could the Earth have aged seventy-three years and us onboard only fourteen? Because the ship accelerates constantly with the force of Earth’s gravity, ten meters per second per second, we spend most of our time traveling near the speed of light. Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity dictates that time passes more slowly as you move faster, so we don’t age at the same rate as Earth. When we reached Epsilon Ninety-Nine, my parents were most likely dead. If not, they’d be over a hundred years old. I had no brothers or sisters—unless my parents had another child to replace me after I left, which is possible, but unlikely—so I doubted I had any immediate family left. The few friends I’d made in high school would be senior citizens now. I hated to think about that, so I didn’t. Everyone on board avoided thinking about Earth. The ship had become our permanent home as soon as we launched, so we would be happier looking to the future than dwelling on the past.

We had to try to keep ourselves as happy as possible.

Our goal, which would take the rest of our lives, was to explore four stars, each similar to our own sun, each with planets about the size of Earth orbiting in the Goldilocks Zone, which was neither too hot nor too cold to support life similar to that on Earth.

Except the first planet we’d explored had life like nothing found on Earth. It was covered with carpet of tiny glittering acid-secreting bugs that killed anyone who set foot on the surface. We found that out the hard way. The only two scouts to step out of the shuttle, Bull and Crank, died terrible deaths.

Before witnessing that horror, we scouts had been clamoring for a chance to be the first to walk on a new planet. Now, not so much.

When we arrived at Epsilon Ninety-nine, we parked two-hundred kilometers over the most Earth-like planet in the system but were in no hurry to descend to the surface. When you spend years getting to a planet that’s likely to have life, it makes sense to spend as much time as necessary surveying it from space to get some idea what is down there before sending down a landing party.

We’d been staring at the planet from orbit for three weeks and liked what we saw.

There were buildings and roads down below. What could be more exciting than that?

CHAPTER TWO

My door was open, but Wasp knocked anyway. That’s shipboard culture. When you’re living in close quarters for years on end, you have to be exceedingly respect full of your shipmates’ privacy.

I’d decorated my room with intricate cut-away models of houses fashioned from scraps of various materials I’d salvaged from trash waiting to be recycled. These were not the houses I’d known on Earth—as I said, nostalgia was considered offensive on board because it made us unhappy—but fantasies of what houses might look like when we returned to an Earth that was five hundred years older than when we’d left. The other scouts didn’t realize that was what I intended to depict; they thought I was speculating about the abodes of aliens we might encounter. I didn’t bother correcting their misperceptions.

Wasp ignored my decor. She’d seen it so often, she could probably reproduce it in her sleep. Hey, Red. You heard the latest?

I don’t know. What’s the latest? Gossip ran rife through the crew and scouts. Even after fourteen years, there were new stories to be spread every day. And if there weren’t, we were happy to repeat old gossip. On board, we recycled absolutely everything.

We’re going to descend. See for ourselves what’s on the surface.

We’ve heard that before. There had been rumors about assembling a landing party every couple of days since we’d reached the planet. They’d all been false.

Yeah, but this time you can believe it. Bat told Ink she’d heard it from Tim who’d been consulted by Lamont.

Four degrees of separation from the source was about as direct as any rumor ever got, but it still strained my credulity. Cameron Lamont, our captain, would make the decision. And Tim Arthur was the ship’s physician, so it made sense that he’d be consulted about the physical fitness of the scouts when selecting the landing party. Bat was a scout who seemed to spend more time around the crew than most of us, so she would be most likely to hear the news first. And Ink was Bat’s closest friend among the scouts. That added up to a reliable source, but only if you believe that was the actual path of the rumor. When it comes to rumors, attributions are as likely to be false as the messages.

I shrugged. I’ll believe it when I see scouts climbing into the shuttle.

They have to send someone down sooner or later. There’s too many questions to just fly away without a descent.

I was well aware of the questions. Scouts were kept informed of the survey results as they were gathered. It was critical that we be as prepared as possible before we were sent down to the surface.

We’d seen alien structures with our telescopes but no activity. No movement. No lights at night. No radio broadcasts. As far as we could determine, the planet was dead. Well, not dead of life, just devoid of intelligent life. Our telescopes were powerful enough to see plants that looked like trees—forests of them—but we could see no animal that looked like it might be intelligent.

I shrugged. Sure. It will happen sooner or later, but it makes no difference to me. I’ll watch the landing party leave and hear what they say when they get back.

Wasp raised an eyebrow. Unless you’re included in the landing party.

I won’t be. I was on the first descent to Edson-Crenshaw. The planet had been named in honor of the two scouts who’d died on the first descent. In fact, I was sent on every descent to Edcren. I’ve done my time. It’s someone else’s turn to be first down. That’s only fair.

Wasp laughed. After fourteen years, you can’t believe that fairness matters to the crew. They do what’s expedient for them and don’t give a damn about what’s fair to the scouts. Like it or not, you’re the most experienced scout on board. You’re the one who showed good judgment and survived when Bull and Crank jumped out of the shuttle on their first descent. You’re the one I’d send down. Hell, if I were in the next landing party, you’re the one I’d want with me.

I felt a twist in my gut. I didn’t agree with her logic, but the captain might follow the same reasoning. I don’t want to go down.

Nobody does. Not after what happened last time. But somebody has to do it.

Not me. I was going to say more, but my tablet beeped. I glanced down. It was a message from the captain: Report to the conference room immediately.

I looked back at Wasp. I’ve got to go. Captain calling.

Good luck.

I feared I was going to need it.

CHAPTER THREE

When I entered the little conference room, the captain was standing, chatting with the ship’s three science officers. He turned to address me. Have a seat, Red. Chip should be here shortly. He resumed chatting with Vern, the chemist, Nancy, the mathematician, and Elizabeth, the biologist. They were discussing the organic hydrocarbons that had been detected. Basically, they were agreeing that the life on the surface had a similar chemical signature to life on Earth, though the atmosphere was a little richer in oxygen and a contained a little less carbon dioxide.

This was just a rehash of observations they’d made weeks ago. There was no information here that the scouts hadn’t been studying already.

Chip was sweaty when she arrived. Sorry. I was on the track when I got your call. I came straight here.

Her story was odd because she wouldn’t have had her tablet when she was running. It was more likely she was in bed with one of the guys and her sweat was the result of a rather more private form of exercise.

The captain didn’t bother questioning her about it. Have a seat.

She sat next to me.

The four crew members sat opposite us. After fourteen years and countless love affairs between crew members and scouts, the crew still preferred to act aloof from the scouts.

The captain got straight to the point. It’s time to send a landing party down. You two have been selected. Do you have any questions?

Chip and I looked at each other in dismay.

I looked back at the captain. Why us?

You’re the most experienced scout, and Chip has the right education for this mission. She’s been studying biology, ethology, and anthropology. It is the opinion of the science officers that she has developed the best skill set for first contact.

He didn’t mention my studies of math, psychology, and neuroscience. Apparently, they weren’t valued as highly.

I wanted to argue with his choice, but it wasn’t worth the effort. Lamont wasn’t known for changing his mind. And he’d shown during the attempted mutiny seven years ago, that he didn’t place much value on scouts’ lives, either. He considered us disposable, which is why the ship had launched with three times as many scouts as crew members. Why are you sending only two of us down when the standard landing party is four? I knew why: because the first descent is the most dangerous and he didn’t want to risk more lives than necessary. Obviously, he’d selected Chip and me because he considered us to be the most expendable scouts on the ship. I asked only because I wanted to hear him say that to my face. I can be perverse like that.

So, he said it, but not directly enough to be satisfying. We don’t expect to accomplish much on the first descent. It’s just going to be a quick touchdown to verify that we’ve selected a landing site that will work for future missions. If your survey of the site is favorable, the second landing party will contain a full complement of scouts.

In other words, he wanted to see if someone could walk on the surface of the planet without getting overwhelmed by acid-secreting bugs and get digested alive before they could make it back to the shuttle.

The captain looked at Chip to see if she had any questions. Why two women rather than one woman and one man?

That was actually an interesting point. In every other landing party, there had been both men and women on each descent. On this descent, it should be important to find out if men could survive as well as women. Maybe something down there might attack only one gender for some mysterious reason.

He didn’t bother getting into any details. There are more female scouts on the ship than male scouts, so it was more likely that female scouts would have the necessary skill set. If a male had been judged more suitable, he would have been chosen instead of one of you.

Bingo. When we launched, there had been fifteen female and fifteen male scouts. But the two men on the first descent to the planet orbiting Theta Eight Seventeen seven years ago, had been rash when they’d jumped out of the shuttle into the acid bug infestation. Then three men had spearheaded the mutiny and been executed. And of the three other scouts who had been killed as collateral damage during the mutiny, two were men. So, to date, we’d lost seven male scouts and only one female. There were extra women on board, so the captain would rather lose a couple of us than any more men.

Lovely bit of sexism in his calculations there.

So, if that answers all your questions about why you were the most appropriate scouts for this first descent to Epsilon Ninety-Nine, I’ll turn this briefing over to our science officers.

Each of the three scientists gave a brief summary of what they had learned about the planet so far. It was a total waste of time. Every scout on the ship had studied all the results of the survey as they had been gathered and had discussed them among themselves and with the science officers. Our lives were at risk when we descended, so we were most eager to know as much as possible.

Any questions? the captain asked when Elizabeth, Nancy, and Vern finally stopped speaking.

I shook my head. Not unless you’ve learned anything new in the couple hours since the last survey report was distributed. Or unless you know anything that you haven’t told the scouts yet.

That’s when the briefing got interesting. Nancy, who had been mentoring my studies in mathematics, glanced at the other scientists, then spoke up. The only thing missing from the reports is our unsupported speculations. We shared our hypotheses with you when there was even a small bit of evidence to support them, but we have been speculating about various possibilities that have no support whatsoever. Basically, we haven’t shared possibilities that extend into the realm of fantasy. We’re not sure if those thoughts would do you any good or not.

Probably not because we scouts have been doing the same thing ever since we got the first survey report weeks ago. But I’d like to hear what you have been speculating about anyway because the more possibilities we consider, the more open our minds. At this point, if we had only one possibility to consider, we would be in the most dangerous position we could be in because tunnel vision can make us miss critical clues. In my study of experimental psychology, I’d developed an extensive mental catalog of the ways the human mind ignores or rejects facts that are inconsistent with an established belief. Making up one’s mind before all the evidence has been considered is the mental equivalent of making oneself willfully blind and deaf.

Nancy shrugged. Okay. If you think it will help. The planet appears devoid of intelligent life, despite the artifacts we see. The obvious conclusion is that there was an advanced civilization, but it collapsed, and the intelligent beings went extinct. Or alternatively, they regressed to a primitive state where they either no longer possess high intelligence, or they have retained their intelligence but are unable to use it.

Most of the scouts believed the intelligent aliens had gone extinct. But we had also considered the possibility that they had devolved back to beasts.

But Nancy wasn’t finished. Another thought is that they are still down there but are hidden. Maybe they live underground or in cleverly camouflaged bunkers on the surface. They might do that if they are at war with each other. We hope we’re not sending you down into an active war zone, but you will want to look for any signs of active hostility.

The scouts had discussed that as well.

Yet another possibility is that they evolved into sea creatures and now live in the oceans. The proportion of water to land is about fifty-fifty, less than on Earth but still giving ample oceans to accommodate billions of intelligent beings underwater. We have probed the oceans with radar and cannot see anything like underwater buildings or other structures, but that doesn’t mean much. The resolution of our radar is less than that of our telescopes, and the water tends to diffuse it badly.

That was something the scouts hadn’t considered, as nearly as I knew.

Another possibility is that the intelligent beings evolved into some higher form that we’ve never seen, and no longer require buildings or other artifacts. Maybe they became intelligent trees, for example.

I rolled my eyes, but Elizabeth, the biologist took a stab at justifying that speculation. Don’t dismiss the possibility of intelligent plants. Consider how difficult it is for people to support our brains. Now imagine if our brains were ten times the size. Instead of becoming whales and letting the water help support giant brains, we might simply become stationary, so we don’t have to move them around anymore.

I had to admit that wasn’t as far-fetched as it first sounded.

Nancy picked up the discussion again. We’ve played around with other, far more speculative fantasies. Like maybe the intelligent beings evolved into a non-material form. Pure energy or pure information. We don’t know how that could happen in practice, but our ignorance doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Vern, the chemist spoke up. Yet another possibility is that the inhabitants left. Built a giant ark in space—something the size of a dwarf planet—and left their solar system behind completely for some reason we can’t yet imagine. He glanced at the other two scientists. There is also another, completely different possibility. Maybe what we’re seeing down there aren’t artifacts from a civilization at all. Maybe they’re just natural outcroppings of minerals. Salt is a cubic crystal, for example. If a salt crystal grew large enough, and was coated in an opaque film of dirt, it would look like a building. Or alternatively, maybe these structures were built by something with no significant intelligence at all, like giant rectangular beehives or termite mounds. It’s entirely possible that there has never been intelligent life on this planet, and we’ve been interpreting what we see through the filter of our own expectations. There is precedence for that. Early telescopes on Earth were inadequate for seeing structures on Mars, so rather than concluding that there were none, astronomers preferred to imagine they were seeing elaborate systems of canals in those blurry, indistinct images. They convinced themselves of that so thoroughly that some of them made complete maps of a canal system that never existed. We might be doing the same when we’re looking down on this planet.

Nancy shrugged. Basically, what we’re saying is that we’ve examined this planet in minute detail for weeks and we simply don’t know what you’re going to find down there. It could be almost anything.

The captain had been looking increasingly irritated and could contain himself no longer. Okay. I don’t think this wild speculation is getting us anywhere. The next step is to get down to the surface and look for ourselves. Your orders are to descend to the surface. If it looks safe in the cameras, open the shuttle door and look outside. Probe the ground before you step out of the shuttle. If anything looks amiss, return here and get decontaminated. Otherwise, you can disembark from the shuttle and look around briefly. Spend no more than fifteen minutes outside the shuttle and don’t walk more than ten meters from the door. Take note of anything interesting, but don’t approach or disturb anything. Later landing parties will study the planet more intrusively. Are the parameters of this mission clear?

Yes, sir. He was clear, but his instructions were not binding. At least not in principle. The regulations that Earth Command had written for this starship were clear. The captain had absolute authority over everything that happened onboard the ship. But he had no authority over landing parties. Once scouts had descended to the surface, they were no longer under his command. The scouts had the authority to make their own decisions once they left the ship. They were in constant contact with the ship and could take advice from the crew if they wished but could not be forced to do so.

The wisdom of this division of authority had been determined by extensive simulations on Earth. The scouts would have far more information about what was happening on the surface than the crew who had only audio and visual contact with them, so they would generally make better decisions. And they could make those decisions far more quickly than some committee parked a hundred or more kilometers above the surface.

On the other hand, regulations that were fine in principle could be ignored in practice. The