Chapter 6
The landing vessel which will take the Earth-mission cohort down to the surface of the planet is 150 feet long and shaped pretty much like a paper airplane. Its wings are retractable. Once the lander is in the atmosphere the wings can be extended as needed for the various flight domains they will encounter, stretching farther out and changing shape as speed is reduced. The lander's rockets are fueled by alcohol and hydrogen peroxide—once in air the atmosphere will supply the oxygen needed, and so the hydrogen peroxide load is only enough for maneuvering while still in space. This is important to the Hakh'hli The fuel for the lander represents a serious expenditure of irreplaceable materials. The alcohol and peroxide it burns are lost forever to the ship's recirculatory systems, and must be made up from outside. Most of the weight of the lander is fuel because it needs to carry enough for a two-way trip. The structure of the ship itself is comparatively light, due to excellent Hakh'hli technology, but even so the total launch weight of the craft is something over 200 tons. Landing on Earth is a piece of cake, because Earth's surface gravity is only 1.0. The landing ship can handle twice that. The interior of the ship has squatting seats for a crew of eight. One of them has been removed, and another refitted for Lysander's non-Hakh'hli anatomy—it is a special, big one, meant for a Senior, but no Senior is going. Because of that it is impossible for Sandy to reach the ship's controls, but that doesn't matter. None of the cohort would trust him to fly them anyway.
When at last Sandy's cohort was sent off to tidy up the lander itself for their flight they all fidgeted nervously on the way. They had never been inside it before, and what little of it they could see from the ports seemed so small It was also not located in a comfortable place for anyone, Hakh'hli or human. When the lander was not in use, which was almost all the time, it nestled in a recess in the outer hull of the big ship. That was the bad part, because, like most of the outer sections of the ship's shell, that part had been left uncooled as the big ship made its course change around Earth's Sun. As they came close enough to feel the heat everyone in the cohort woofed in displeasure. "How do they expect us to work in that?" Bottom demanded.
Polly said shortly, "Shut up." Then she paused, thinking up some additional remark to put him down with, and found one. She added, "Be glad you don't have to go outside."
They were all glad of that. Through the tiny observation ports they could catch glimpses of the hulking lander outside. Around it were eight or ten of the heavy-duty Hakh'hli who were bred for extravehicular duty. They wore spacesuits that were only round balls with a protrusion at one end for their heads and mechanical handling "arms" sticking out all over. The interstellar ship's roll had been controlled to put them in shade, at least, but that solved only part of the problem. The exterior hull of the big interstellar ship itself had soaked up so much heat that it was still reradiating an invisible, constant glow of mild infrared, and the Hakh'hli outside were beyond doubt sweltering in their suits. It was not only hard work but dangerous—even a Hakh'hli bred for such things could stand just so much suffocating swelter—but it had to be done; their big job was to rig the stiff wiremesh outer shell that would surround the lander and, when overlaid with foil, would intercept the worst of the micrometeorites in Earth's trash orbits.
It turned out that the interior of the landing craft was even worse. Polly fussily checked the pressure gauges to make sure there was a seal and then popped the door. Out of it came a blast of hot air that reeked of alcohol and decay. "Oh, turds!" Helen groaned. "Do we have to work in that?"
They did, of course. Polly ordered Bottom in first to turn on the air circulators. When he gasped that they were beginning to work she kicked Demmy in the door. The rest followed.
Even with the air circulators working away it stank. There was a concentrated reek of stale and musty disuse. That was natural enough; the lander hadn't been used either at Alpha Centauri or in the previous visit to Sol—at Alpha because there was nothing to go to, at Sol because the Major Seniors hadn't liked the looks of things and so decided to give the Earth a little time to settle down.
The previous users had not been neat. Three of the seats had crusted stains on them, and in the cupboards of the landing craft there were shrunken bits of decay that might once have been food. "Slobs," Sandy gasped. "I'd like to tell them a thing or two!"
"Don't count on it," Bottom advised. "They've all been minced a hundred years. No one has made a planet landing in—well, when was it, Polly? Six stars ago?"
"Look it up on your own time," she ordered. "Come on, let's clean up!"
"Yeah, but hold on a minute," offered Demmy. "What about that alcohol smell?"
"What about it? It's clearing out, isn't it?"
"I don't mean about the smell, I mean why was it here? How could alcohol fuel get into the cabin? Does that mean there's a leak?"
"That," she said grimly, "is one of the things we're here to check. Probably it's just seepage, but we'll have to pull the seals out and check them."
Pulling the seals was the hardest job—a solid twelfth-day of difficult work—but thankfully there was nothing wrong; the fuel smell was simply the slow, centuries-long seepage of ancient fumes. The fuel compartment was as tight as it needed to be. Once that was done the cohort cheered up.
What they were doing was arduous and not very pleasant, no doubt, but it was for their own sakes that they were doing it. They were going! Even the heat became bearable as they turned to the easier, if nastier, job of cleaning out the waste left by the long-dead previous crew, because what would replace the old moldering garments and food remnants would be their own. "Let's have a game of Questions," Tanya proposed, beginning to cheer up. Sandy opened his mouth to suggest a topic, but Polly was ahead of him.
"Certainly not," she said. "That is immature. We should concentrate on our mission now, not childish things. Let's drill Sandy on his cover story."
"Oh, turds," Sandy said, but the others accepted the idea at once.
"Tell us your name," Helen demanded.
He shrugged, scouring out the inside of an empty locker. Over his shoulder he said, "John William Washington is my name."
"Then why do they call you 'Sandy'?" called Obie, from behind the great pilot seat.
"It's just a kind of nickname. It's short for Lysander."
And Polly cut in. "Can I see your ID?"
That was a new one. Sandy hesitated, with the scouring stick in his hand. He didn't have any kind of papers. "I don't know what to say to that," he confessed.
Demmy helped out. "You can say you were 'mugged,' Sandy," he offered.
"What is 'mugged'?"
"You know, robbed. Like in Robin Hood."
"Yes, sure," said Sandy, beginning to catch the spirit. "I was robbed. They took my wallet and my suitcase—"
Polly interrupted sharply, "Not a suitcase! You wouldn't be carrying a suitcase, would you?"
"All right, a knapsack. They took my knapsack and all my papers."
"Phew," cried Obie, opening a locker and recoiling. "This is awful."
"Awful or not," Polly said grimly, "you have to clean it up. Now, John William Washington, tell me, where are you from?"
"That's easy. I'm from Miami Beach in Florida. That's a state. I'm a college student, and I'm taking some time off to travel, and I was, ah, 'hitch-hiking.'"
"What are your parents' names?"
"My parents?" Sandy stopped to think for a moment. "Ah, my parents are named Peter and Alice. Peter is the male. Only they're both dead. They were killed in a car crash, and—and—well, I was really upset about it. So I quit school for a while. Anyway, I always wanted to go to Alaska."
Polly sneered, "What a wimp you are, Wimp. You're going to have to do better than that when you're on the Earth. Imagine not remembering your parents' names!"
"Really?" Sandy asked hotly. "And who were your parents?"
Polly waggled her head menacingly. "You know perfectly well that my genetic data is on file," she said cuttingly. She drew her legs in under her as though about to spring. Sandy braced himself.
He was saved by a shriek from Demmy. "Bugs! This locker is full of bugs! How'd they get in here, anyway?"
Diverted, Polly glared at him. "What difference does it make how they got here?" she demanded. "We'll have to get rid of them. Go requisition a hawkbee nest at once, Demetrius."
"And who are you to be giving me orders?" Demmy snarled, crouching down on his own strong legs for a charge.
It didn't happen. MyThara's voice stopped them. "What ith thith?" she cried. "You who are about to carry out the urgent inthtructionth of the Major Theniorth acting like new-hatched infantth? Now, tell me what ith going on?"
And when it had been explained to her she waggled her jaw. "Very well, that ith right, we need a hawkbee netht in here to thcavenge out the inthectth. Demmy, go get one. And what ith thith other thtuff?" She was pointing to a heap of foul-smelling debris.
"It's to go into the titch'hik tanks," Polly said sullenly. "It's all decayed."
"It thertainly ith! Do you want to poithon the titch'hik? That mutht go in the contaminated binth to be thterilithed. Take it there at onthe, Hippolyta."
"Why can't Sandy do it?"
"Lythander can't do it," MyThara explained, "becauthe I have inthtructed you to do it. Lythander hath a different job right now. Now get on with it." She glanced around the interior of the lander. "I thee you have all the lockerth empty," she said. "That ith good. You may each have one for your own."
"Only one?" Obie cried. "To go to Earth?"
"Only one," MyThara said adamantly. "The retht are for nethethary thupplieth and food—after all, you mutht take rationth for three weekth with you, you know."
"Why just three weeks?" Helen asked, licking her tongue out irritably.
"Becauthe that ith what the Major Theniorth ordered, Helena. Now, Lythander, come with me. It'th time to try on your new garmenth!"
Come back in three weeks? But why did they have to come back in three weeks? As Sandy tagged rebelliously along after MyThara he thought, all right, maybe some of them would return to the ship in three weeks, but not necessarily all of them . . .
MyThara left him at the cohort quarters while she went to get his Earth outfit. At her orders he stripped, putting his everyday suit into the locker—
And in the middle of doing it he began to tremble.
The fact that he was going to leave the ship had not really worked ifs way into the part of his mind that felt panic before, but now it was making up for lost time.
He glanced around the cohort chamber, shuddering. He was going to leave the ship. But such a thing had never happened! No one ever "left" the ship—they died, true, and were minced and devoured by the titch'hik, but there was no other way that any person of all the persons he had known in all his life could ever cease to be in the ship. Outside the ship was space.
By the time MyThara arrived, her stubby arms laden with two baskets filled with articles of clothing, Sandy was sitting woebegone on the floor by his locker, his eyes squinted shut, his face drawn. "Now, Lythander!" she cried sharply. "What ith it? Are you ill?"
"I have to leave the ship," he told her miserably.
"Well, of courthe you do. That'th what you have been trained for all your life."
"But I'm afraid, MyThara-tok. I don't want to leave you."
She hesitated, then gently gripped his arm with one tough, hard hand. He could feel the "helper" spur digging into his flesh—reassuring rather than painful. "You will have a whole new life," she told him. "Now, pleathe, try thethe on. I want to thee how beautiful my Lythander will look on Earth!"
Slowly he began to obey. MyThara insisted he dress from the skin out, so first he pulled on the white, thin, one-piece garment she called "underwear," and the "sox"—long black tubes of material, closed at one end. The shirt was a pastel pink, the trousers dark blue, the vest red, the jacket brown, and the shoes black.
"It'th beautiful," she told him.
"It's very hot," he complained.
"But that ith becauthe it'th very cold where you're going, Lythander," she said severely. "That ith why you have thethe other thingth, which you mutht altho try on." And she pulled out of the second basket a second pair of trousers, much thicker and pegged at the ankles, and heavy overshoes that went right over the soft dancing pumps, and a jacket with a hood that weighed more than all the other clothes combined. By the time they were all on Lysander was sweating.
"You look very handthome," MyThara said sadly.
"I feel like a boiled tuber," he growled.
"All right, you can take them off." She folded each garment neatly as he removed them. "Did you know that they've thtarted the perokthide plant?" she asked.
"Oh, really?" Lysander considered that fact. Landing rockets were the only Hakh'hli devices fueled with hydrogen peroxide and alcohol. So the peroxide factory sat idle for decades at a time, sometimes a century or more—there was no need for chemical rocket fuel in the long journeys between stars. Feeling better, he tried a smile. It didn't quite come off, because there was something in her tone that puzzled him. "Aren't you happy for me?" he demanded. "I'd think you'd be proud to see me go to Earth!"
"But I won't, Lythander," she lisped sorrowfully. "I won't thee you again at all. I'm to have my phythical tomorrow and, you thee, Lythander, I won't path."
And on the day when at last the interstellar ship was at its proper point in its orbit around the Earth and the lander was poised to go, what MyThara said was true. She wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere anymore. She hadn't passed the termination examination.
There wasn't any ceremony about their departure. There wasn't even anyone to see them off, except for ChinTekki-tho, floating nervously around in the microgravity of the ship with its main engines off for the first time in decades. "There are clouds in your landing region," he announced to the cohort as they prepared to board. "That is good. It means that you will be able to land without being seen."
"What are 'clouds,' ChinTekki-tho?" Obie asked nervously, and was rewarded with a pinch from Polly.
"Clouds are good," she told him. "Don't be a wimp like Sandy!"
ChinTekki-tho was looking at Sandy, who was standing by himself, holding his parka and boots, his face damp with tears. "And what is the matter with Lysander?" he asked.
"It's MyThara. She's dead," Polly said.
"Of course she's dead; she failed her examination. But what is there in that for him to think funny?"
"He doesn't think it's funny, ChinTekki-tho," Obie explained. "He's a human being, you know. He's crying. That's what they do when they're sad."
"But what is there in a worn-out Hakh'hli being terminated to make him sad? Oh, Lysander," ChinTekki-tho said sorrowfully. "At this late time I am beginning to wonder if we have trained you properly, after all. But it's too late to worry about that. Get in, all of you. You launch in one-twelfth of a twelfth-day."