Blue Dawn Jay of Aves Read online

CHAPTER 2

  KATE ON AVES

  After a solid but surprisingly gentle bump and deep thumping sound announced successful planet-fall, the deafening, unrelenting, bone-rattling man-made thunder abruptly faded away, and all sensation of motion and vibration vanished. Young scientist Katherine Deborg savored the moment. After a week of rocket powered deceleration, the stillness and near silence were heavenly. Only the deep faint hum of the disengaged but ever active anti-matter powered quantum warp engines remained.

  Cargo spacecraft such as this one were simply not designed for comfort, Kate reflected. In addition to numbing noise and vibration for much of the trip, living space was claustrophobic. Fuel and space-warping hyper-drive and rocket apparatus and fuel occupied about fifty percent of the ship’s volume, and about forty-nine percent was cargo space, currently occupied by logging and farming related machinery and other much needed supplies for the planet Aves that were too difficult to cost-effectively fabricate on-planet.

  A mere one percent of the spacecraft’s volume was designed to continuously support human life, and much of that consisted of storage bins, narrow access conduits, and control stations for the tiny six person crew. Three dozen Spartan, one-room, makeshift passenger quarters were kludged from scattered, odd-shaped spaces between storage and engine compartments, and connected by twisting, narrow, dull-gray corridors. The two dozen horizontally arranged habitable sectors were further connected by twin vertical cargo elevator shafts that traversed the four-hundred meter length of the ship.

  The over-all cylindrical shape of the ship somewhat resembled that of space-ships depicted in ancient science fiction B-grade movies. When on-planet, the ship’s squat, hydraulically adjusted legs supported an enormous vertical cylinder that suggestively pointed skyward. The ship was massive; built of the strongest available steels and composites, with a constantly running gravity warping core that helped keep it from collapsing when stressed by planetary or acceleration induced gravity. Built to haul great cargos in addition to heavy liquid fuel loads and enormous rocket and space warping engines, the ships were in a very real sense universes unto themselves when in full warp-drive mode. However, futurists regarded these ships as temporary kludges that would be replaced within a few decades. They envisioned ships with better warp control that would need no rocket propulsion at all and require a much less robust physical structure.

  Each rounded end of the cylinder contained a flight control station. The top deck contained the forward flight control station, which was normally used for the first part of a voyage. By pointing the ship’s center axis along the direction of acceleration/ deceleration, except for the several disorienting minutes needed to turn a ship around after completing hyper drive, the same sense of ‘up and down’ relative to the ship could be maintained throughout the lengthy rocket powered portions of the trip that occurred before and after hyper drive. This meant that for the last portion of the trip the ship appeared to be traveling backwards as it decelerated, controlled from the aft flight control station that was wedged between giant rocket thrusters on the rear of the ship.

  Kate took a deep breath of cold stale air that despite exhaustive filtering smelled too strongly of wood and other past cargo. Elite professionals such as scientists usually traveled to Aves aboard one of the more comfortable and better-equipped passenger flights; Kate would have done that herself, if her employer the Federation Space Directorate hadn't been so anxious for her to get to Aves.

  “More the pity; time to leave these wonderful accommodations,” she declared to herself sarcastically. After a month on-board she had gotten used to talking aloud to herself. As she unstrapped and pushed herself out of her contour seat she surveyed her tiny suite for the last time, and felt lucky to be a smaller than average person.

  At the push of a button one wall of the suite became fully mirrored, and she again inspected her appearance. After all, she was reporting to Aves for work, and wanted to make favorable first impressions with her new scientist colleagues. She smiled at herself, quite satisfied that she looked sharp in her standard, medium blue, tight fitting but formal Space Directorate laboratory uniform. The uniform showed to advantage her trim but well curved, athletic, twenty-seven Earth-years old figure. Her light brown hair wasn’t quite as short as she liked it, but still within regulation guidelines, and it lay neat and natural to frame her oval face and large, soft blue eyes. Even without bio-enhancement, she didn’t need makeup to be a cut or two above average in appearance. No makeup known to woman could stand up to Aves heat and humidity anyway. “Good enough for Directorate work,” she muttered out of habit, though she had only worked for the Space Directorate for the past six months since earning her doctorate.

  She made sure to put the message stick she had been creating over the past few days into her uniform pocket. It contained several hours of three-D video that her parents and siblings would hopefully soon enjoy at home on Mars. She was long used to living apart from them, but not to being light-decades away. Fortunately the same space/time-warping hyper-drive technology that powered travel between star systems supported near-instantaneous communication, though data rates were limited and even one-way messages were very expensive. This message would cost Kate a week’s pay, but it was worth it to keep in touch with her family.

  Gathering up her suitcase, she stepped out of the cabin and wheeled it across the aisle to a doorway that opened to the ‘down’ elevator shaft. She paused and took several slow deep breaths. She had a healthy respect for gravity, and millions of years of instincts that didn't know anything about anti-gravity technology. After again assuring herself that the bright green lights around the doorway indicated that the elevator was operative, she steeled herself to step boldly into the emptiness of the shaft without looking down.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when the warp-engine idle-mode powered gravity field provided immediate weightlessness. She and her suitcase drifted to a slowly circulating tether line which she grasped with her free hand, and the line began to pull her steadily downward towards the bottom deck two hundred meters below. The cavernous fifteen-meter wide shaft seemed to be deserted except for herself, and she wasn't about to risk a disturbing bout of vertigo by searching for other passengers by looking up or down the shaft.

  To keep her mind off the fact that she was floating in mid-air hundreds of meters above the shaft bottom without any visible means of support, she counted the hatches as she moved past them. She passed more than a dozen smallish hatches that like hers were open to passenger levels, but saw nobody else. The other passengers were probably already down and off the ship by now, she suspected. She also passed nearly a dozen cargo levels, as evidenced by huge cargo doors that would only be opened and utilized after the passengers were unloaded, thank the gods! She would be in full panic if the shaft was crowded with hundreds of tons of floating farm and tree harvesting machinery. She didn't envy the coming job of the cargo crew. What would it be like to drive a hundred-ton harvesting machine into the yawning chasm of the elevator shaft?

  The journey down the shaft seemed to take forever, but at last she was relieved to land gently at the bottom. As the slow moving floor-way moved her out of the elevator she felt her weight gradually return, and she soon found herself in a crowded aisle with the other 59 passengers and their luggage. Like her, each passenger had only one large suitcase. Additional clothes and other items would be cost-effectively fabricated on-planet from planet raw materials.

  Most passengers engaged in happy, excited banter and appeared to be very happy that the voyage was coming to an end. Kate couldn’t stop smiling herself; she was so excited to be on Aves. This was the sort of assignment she had dreamed of since she was a child: an alien world full of alien life to study! Being back on a planet would take some getting used too, however. Despite her spare, wiry build, Kate felt heavy, for although gravity was only about seven-tenths Earth-norm, she had spent most of the previous month in zero-gravity hyper-flight, and before that had spent
most of her life on Mars. But even the relatively heavy gravity couldn’t keep the bounce out of her step as she pressed towards the ship exit end of the crowded corridor, anxious to catch her first glimpse of Aves.

  "Have your IDs ready," echoed a proclamation from near the passenger sector exit hatch. Kate couldn’t see its source through the throng of passengers, but recognized the voice of the first officer. "And be ready for final identification and decontamination prior to debarkation."

  The 60 passengers collectively groaned. “Fudge,” muttered Kate, her perfect happy mood broken. “More than enough is enough already, I would have hoped.”

  Other passengers voiced similar complaints. They had all been under close observation within a space ship for a month; surely who they were had already been established many times over. They had also been thoroughly decontaminated a dozen times over. Nevertheless, over the next two hours each individual still had to suffer a disinfectant shower, multiphase scanning, sonic scrub, radiation bombardment, and internal flushing via chemical antibiotics, plus a DNA ID check. All of that took about five minutes per person, four at a time; the rest of the time involved waiting in line in the hallway while all passengers and their luggage were processed. At least Kate managed to submit the message for her parents to the ship crew for transmission, so the waiting wasn't a complete waste of time.

  As a biologist, Kate understood the importance of avoiding contamination of this planet, but as a human being she felt a bit like a lab rat, and she couldn't avoid feeling that the Space Directorate overdid decontamination just a bit. At least while she was on assignment here for the next Earth-year she would hopefully be able to avoid the indignity of further formal decontamination procedures, though she would still be required to ingest chemical supplements to make up for the loss of the billions of tiny creatures that normally inhabited humans and in various ways contributed to their health, and to also combat local pathogens and discourage local insect-life.

  Personal in-body biological and robotic enhancements, long in vogue among the wealthy and certain professionals, were prohibited on Aves. She suspected that her selection for this assignment was largely due to the fact that she had never acquired any of those. As a professional biologist, she felt that the human body was already complex enough.

  At least as a biologist and an adult, Kate understood the need for decontamination measures. She pitied the children on the flight that were too young to understand. However, she had noticed that very few of the passengers were children, which wasn’t unusual for interplanetary space travel. Aves was a frontier world, where work-capable adults were wanted; sexually capable adults who could also be relied upon to reproduce and expand the sparse planetary work force, without further recourse to expensive technology based methods of increasing the working population such as providing light-years of transportation, or to socially unacceptable methods such as cloning.

  Finally the passengers were allowed to disembark. The big cargo hatches weren't opened; they would leave the ship one-by-one through a small human-proportioned hatchway. The hatch slid aside and they filed out of the cold, cramped, sterile spacecraft environment and into an uncomfortably hot, open world teeming with life.

  Kate sampled the Aves atmosphere even before she reached the hatchway. The air was so thick and damp that it almost seemed to Kate to be liquid, and smelled so rich with life that she was reminded of the great arboretums on Mars, where she had begun her formal study of biology. “Fantastic!” she exclaimed aloud, grinning. “Aves smells like a zoo!” As well it should, she realized. She recalled reading an estimate that Aves was home to more than ten-thousand cubic kilometers of living material, over ten-times the amount of life ever found on Earth.

  It also crossed her mind that she was now inhaling airborne alien microbes and other tiny alien life forms. Though she had started taking the prescribed protective chemicals at the conclusion of her final decontamination, she felt a little spooked. However, such concerns were overwhelmed by the exhilaration of being on a new world teaming with life.

  Kate had intended to pause and gaze at the Aves panorama when it was her turn to step outside, but the twin suns were so bright that she had to focus on walking down the landing ramp, keeping ahead of the excited passengers behind her, and keeping her heavy two-wheeled suitcase under reasonable control.

  At the base of the ramp a smiling, black bearded, middle aged, scruffy looking little man shook each arrival’s hand and muttered greetings as they stepped off the short ramp and onto the concrete landing apron. The greeter’s penetrating brown eyes caught Kate's as he reached for her free hand and shook it firmly.

  "Welcome to Aves, Dr. Deborg," he said, as Kate blinked under the brilliance of Aves' twin suns, and marveled at the vastness of the habitable living space that a planet could provide. "Please wait for me and I'll walk with you to the tram that will take us to the Operations building. By the way folks," continued the man, loud enough now for all the new arrivals to hear, "I'm George Keto, Governor of Aves."

  As the astonished Kate waited nearby, the small man turned to eagerly greet a handsome young man that wore severely plain clothes of black and gray. He was tall and muscular, and moved with the easy grace of an athlete. On his broad back he carried a plain black fabric backpack, in contrast to the brightly colored, wheeled composite suitcases that the other passengers used. "You're of the Brethren, aren't you?" Governor Keto asked him.

  "Yes Governor, praise be to our holy cause," enthused the young man. "Josh Whitcom be my name."

  "Welcome aboard, Josh,” Keto replied. “You'll find the town's Brethren Meeting House a half-kilo past the Operations building. Look for the steeple.

  “As you know, the mustering locations for all of you are identified by your visa files, just follow the signs from the Op-Center," Keto announced, raising his voice again so that all the new arrivals could hear him. "Don't worry about getting lost. Aves is a big planet but Space Port City is a very small town."

  Curious, Kate stepped further aside with her suitcase and watched the Governor greet the remaining passengers one by one. She had never even seen a planetary governor in person before, much less spoken with one. She had half expected some sort of official greeting, but certainly not from the Governor himself. She was after all merely a junior grade scientist. On the other hand, the man was greeting everyone, not only her. It must be something that he normally does, she realized. After all, there were only a few thousand humans on this planet, so in theory he could actually greet and meet each one as they arrived. Maybe he was merely friendly, or more likely, local elections were going to be held soon. In any case, she liked it. On Earth and even Mars, elected officials were for all practical purposes mere holographic or flat screen images.

  Meanwhile the young Brethren man, Josh what's-his-name, marched past her without even offering her a glance. That was unusual behavior for any man between fourteen and a hundred fourteen Earth-years of age, and Kate wondered if she had lost her reasonably good looks somewhere between star systems, or if the guy simply had abnormal gene sequences and hormone levels for some reason or other. More likely, it was simply abnormal thought processes, honed by years of fanatical religious falter-garb. The Brethren were only one of thousands of fringe religious groups still active on Earth despite being overshadowed by centuries of ever advancing and all-encompassing fact-based, science established knowledge. They were pacifists and relatively harmless though, as far as Kate knew.

  The man serenely stared straight ahead as he walked away, perhaps already looking for the Meeting House, where he would probably immediately re-submerge himself in mind-numbing Brethren chants and song. Compared with Earth and Mars, Aves frontier life was no-frills, low-tech, and involved a lot of physical labor. Now that Kate thought about it she realized that the Brethren were probably a perfect fit for frontier life on Aves.

  For a few ridiculous moments Kate fanaticized herself paired with Josh, singing and muttering goofy phrases that sounded
righteous and special because of the use of arcane, poetic sounding language, washing clothes by hand and cooking food prepared from scratch. Then sanity resumed and she laughed at the whole crazy idea. Still, he was tall, handsome, and athletic looking, and Kate wondered how it was that she had not even noticed him during the flight. His severe wardrobe alone, everything black or gray, should have made him stand out among the other passengers, who wore mostly flashy greens and reds in keeping with current Earth fashions. However as one of the Brethren, he wouldn't have been mixing with the other passengers any more than she had been.

  Kate had conversed with several of the other passengers, particularly early in the flight, but found no one that she had very much in common with, knew any details about Aves, or even had a decent sense of humor. Her fellow passengers were mostly stoic farmers and other skilled laborers and technicians hired to become farmers, mechanics, or loggers. Most would help grow food crops or harvest timber. They were picked by a combination of screening and lotteries, as there were millions of applicants for each available position.

  Nearly all of them were young couples that would help produce more Aves workers in their spare time. As a result there were very few unattached men on the flight or on Aves. Not that Kate was looking for one, or so she told herself. So far her skirmishes with the opposite sex hadn’t been particularly promising, at least in an emotional or practical sense. Her focus in recent years was on her career, not on her love-life.

  Rather than socializing, Kate had spent much of her flight time studying Aves, or at least attempting to study Aves. She had anticipated that the ship computer system would contain plenty of detailed information on Aves, including even scientific reports. That was standard procedure for any ship journeying to another planet, or so she had thought. She had been surprised and disappointed to find only a few superficial training briefs on Aves in the ship’s computer system.

  She peered around eagerly now at Aves, the wonder planet. After two centuries of active space exploration beyond Earth’s solar system, mankind had finally hit the jackpot, for, although Aves was a new frontier, it was not a totally unfamiliar one. It was an amazingly Earth-like planet, already bursting with Earth-like life, and ripe for immediate colonization by humanity, and for growing food much needed on overcrowded Earth and throughout the Federation. Despite advances in synthetic food fabrication, naturally grown food was still aesthetically preferred and more nutritious. Soon because of Aves it would also be more economical.

  From where she stood now, Space Port City, the capital of Aves, looked much like any Earth-side spaceport, though she knew that it was populated by only a few thousand settlers. The prominent feature of the immediate area, besides the hot, heavy, pungent atmosphere, was scorched concrete. Kilometers of landing field stretched in all directions, upon which towered hundreds of titanic cargo vessels similar to the one she had arrived on. This port hosted an enormous number of ships, far more than she had ever seen in one port, even on Earth or Mars.

  The upright ships towered suggestively towards a deep blue sky, which except for having two yellow suns and being deeper blue, looked very much like an Earth sky, complete with scattered bits of fluffy white clouds slowly moving with the gentle breeze.

  The atmosphere was much thicker here then on Earth, particularly in terms of nitrogen, but oxygen and carbon dioxide levels were not much above the Earth-norm. The air was incredibly clean compared to Earth’s, though it was full of life byproducts, and very moist, particularly when compared to Mars. The air actually felt damp to her exposed skin, but so far the special, finely woven clothing she wore was doing a good job of wicking away sweat and letting heat escape from her body. Her hair covered head would pose the biggest problem. Though her head-hair was only about ten centimeters long, she already decided that she should definitely cut it even shorter. Fashions be damned!

  Kate was looking forward to experiencing rain; she had experienced natural rain only twice in her life, both times on Earth. In the winter it would even snow here, something she had never experienced. The monstrous winter was a long time away, however, due to Aves years being more than twenty Earth-months long. Currently it was just past mid-summer and Aves temperatures were near their peak.

  She could see in the distance beyond the edges of the landing area huge space-craft hangars, warehouses, grain storage buildings, and lumber yards. On the side of the landing field opposite the town a rich green wall of fields and trees rose. It was so far away that she couldn’t make out individual trees, but this was definitely more living green than she had ever seen before.

  As for the amazing giant birds that were responsible for the name of the planet, Kate was disappointed to find that none were immediately evident.

  "You're going to work with John Weltman, Dr. Deborg? Isn’t that correct?" asked the Governor, after he had greeted the last arrival and caught up with Kate.

  "Yes sir, that's my assignment," she replied, as she matched the Governor's slow walking pace in the direction that the others had taken.

  "Were you told anything else about your assignment? If it doesn't break your protocol to tell me, of course? Oh, and call me George or simply Keto, everyone does. We're pretty informal here on Aves."

  Kate shook her head, still puzzled as to why she was talking to a Governor. "Sure, then call me Kate. The Directorate seemed anxious to send me, yes, but no, they didn't tell me anything specific. However, I'm an exoplanetary biologist and this is a newly discovered planet teaming with life, so I'm sure that there will be plenty for me to do."

  "Of course, of course," agreed Keto, not sounding convinced. "It's just that as you do perform your duties, whatever those may be, you should keep in mind the general situation. I wanted to be sure that you understood that."

  "I'm sorry, understand what?"

  "The importance of our work here on Aves, Kate: the big picture. Our first big grain crop will be ripe and ready to ship to a hungry Earth in about a month or so. Harvest will continue then for several more months."

  "Yes, your first big food crop is the top news on Earth, and the top news in the orientation materials shown on the flight. It’s quite impressive, after only four Aves-years since the discovery of this planet. Enough food is expected from your first year of crops to feed a billion people on Earth for an Earth-standard-year, I understand.”

  “Yes, and that’s only the beginning. This will mean a vast improvement in diet for humanity. Far less fabricated synthetic food will be necessary.”

  “And it’s being grown by a few thousand pioneering settlers on a strange new world. The work involved must be incredible."

  "You can't begin to imagine the half of it."

  "Of course," agreed Kate, as she wondered why a busy planetary Governor was going over material with her that had been gone over a dozen times during her flight.

  "I ask that you be sensitive to our situation here, Kate, that's all. For instance, you can’t make public announcements about Aves or make reports to the Space Directorate unless they are cleared through my office. Also, all substantial reports including scientific ones must first go through the proper Corporation channels. That's our protocol here.

  “This is a Corporation planet, not a public one. Access to even private interplanetary communications is through my office. Just work through Weltman while you're here and hopefully we'll be OK on that score. Weltman usually follows protocol, but then of course he didn't do that when he got you sent here, did he?"

  "He didn't?"

  "No, he certainly didn't. He went outside the Planetary Government and the Star Corporation and straight to the Space Directorate to get you, and the Corporation in particular isn't happy about it."

  "They aren't? The Directorate often loans specialized personnel to the big corporations to aid in off-Earth studies. I didn't realize there was anything unusual in my case." It wasn’t quite true. The Space Directorate Head herself had briefed Kate for this assignment, and that in itself was extremely unus
ual. The Directorate Head had informed Kate that she would be only the second Directorate scientist working on Aves. That was an extraordinary situation, but the Star Corporation had a lot of political pull, and had gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid scrutiny by anyone outside of Star. Why that was the case was one of the things the Directorate wanted to know. But that was all that the Directorate Head could or would tell her. Now she was having a similarly obscure conversation with a governor.

  Keto slowed his pace and shook his head in astonishment. "They really haven't told you much, have they?"

  Kate shrugged. "I studied a few superficial briefs on Aves during the flight in, and that's about it. I actually found more information about Aves before leaving Moon-Base 3 than I could find during the flight here."

  Keto sighed. "Well, in that case I'll defer the rest of our discussion until after you've gotten your feet wet here. Fair enough?”

  "Of course, Governor." Kate stopped dead in her tracks and stared at the still distant Operations Center and what stood beside it. "By the Gods!" she exclaimed. Her attention had been mostly directed at Keto. It had taken several minutes for what she had been glancing at in the distance to fully register. The Op Center that she had at first assumed to be a modest single story structure was really a large five-story office building, and the solitary tree that towered over it wasn't simply a big tree, it was titanic. It was three or four hundred meters tall, she estimated, tall as a spacecraft, and its girth far surpassed that of even the largest trees that centuries ago had thrived on Earth.

  Keto chuckled. "You've just fully realized the true size of the tree near the Op Center. Everyone has a similar reaction when they see their first grown–up native tree in person. You've seen visuals of Aves trees in news stories and training briefs probably, but it's not quite the same as seeing them in person. You've seen our wood products on Earth or Mars of course?"

  "Of course. Little souvenirs to start with, but now they're even making furniture out of the stuff. Mostly wood chairs, much like the ones seen in Earth museums, though much stronger. However, on Earth or Mars an Aves chair costs a month's salary."

  "After we ship the food out, we’ll be shipping plenty more lumber that we’ve had curing. Wood prices will drop rapidly, once our lumber processing operation is in full swing."

  “Cheap wood? Even with all of the expenses involved?”

  “Shipping costs are falling, due to mass production of trans-warp hyper-drive spacecraft and anti-matter.”

  “What about decontamination?”

  “Wood decontamination? It’s cheaper than you’d think. There’s plenty of free radiation and vacuum in space to expose the wood to before it even leaves the Aves system. Food decontamination will actually be a bit trickier but still cheap. Radiation spewing twin suns come with certain advantages.”

  "And what about the environmental impact to Aves?"

  "Trivial, compared to the total planetary system. This planet has twice the land that Earth has, and most of it is wooded. We plan to clear only a small fraction of the total land area. Besides, we're not simply clear-cutting, we're leaving plenty of forest intact. But then you're probably the expert in the environmental impact field."

  "Hardly. I'm a novice. But the scientific research opportunities for study on Aves are enormous, and I'm really excited about being here and being part of it."

  Keto’s smile faded. “Research opportunities? Yes, of course. You’ll need to discuss that aspect of your stay with Weltman.” Kate had the distinct impression that he was holding back something that was important.

  They approached the tram. It was similar to a museum bus that Kate had seen once during her childhood, but larger. She noted that wheels two meters in diameter were used instead of electromagnetic hovering. Wheels were primitive but very energy efficient. Kate remembered reading that most fuel on Aves is derived from the fermentation of native plant-life that is being cleared away. Gasoline they called it, based on old tradition, but it was actually largely alcohol.

  All the other passengers were already in their seats by the time Kate and George climbed aboard the tram. It was partially air-conditioned, thank the Gods; it was shady and at least ten degrees cooler in the bus. Though it was still early morning it was already uncomfortably hot outside, and Kate felt that the ride would have been unbearable without air-conditioning.

  George spoke into his wrist-COM and the auto-piloted tram started to ponderously roll towards the Op Center, which must have been still at least two kilometers away, even though it was at the apex of a peninsula of buildings and green that jutted far out onto the vast concrete landing field.

  From her front seat next to the Governor, Kate observed the wondrously huge tree as the big tram approached the OP Center. She had of course seen trees before; scattered remnants of Earth's forests were still cultivated in protective enclosures by a few rich collectors and by a few local governments on both Earth and Mars. She had studied old books on trees, and she had even seen a forty-meter specimen once, alleged to be the largest remaining tree on Earth, in an arboretum in New Chicago.

  She had seen a somewhat larger tree on Mars, where much more consideration was given to plant life, due to dependence on plants, fungus and bacteria to accomplish much of the vast Mars terraforming project. Paradoxically, oxygen production on Earth was now predominantly artificial, while Mars oxygen production was predominantly natural. Biological terraforming methods had proven to be even more effective than nanotechnology, though tiny nano-bots accomplished much of the initial physical rendering of Mars rock material. The latest projections estimated completion of the Mars Project in only three more centuries. Born and raised on Mars, Kate often dreamed of being able to go about outdoors on Mars without breathing apparatus. On Earth, breathing filters were common because of pollutants and disease. Not having to use any breathing gear was a rare luxury for any human anywhere.

  The tree she was looking at had to mass over a thousand times as great as the largest Mars tree. When the bus pulled to a stop at the Op-Center Kate and many of the other newcomers walked towards the tree wide-eyed and gawking, drawn by its awesome size and natural beauty, to gather at the edge of the wide patch of short-trimmed grass that surrounded it. A few partly dried leaves one to two meters across were scattered on the ground, and with difficulty Kate picked one up. It felt like a gigantic centimeter-thick rubbery mat, but looked amazingly familiar. “This is a tulip tree leaf,” she mumbled, puzzled.

  “You’ll find that many life forms here are very similar to some Earth counterpart,” said Governor Keto, who had appeared next to her.

  Kate dropped the heavy leaf onto the grass. “I had expected similarity of course, due to convergent evolution in an environment similar to that of Earth, but not virtual identity of species. Except of course for the size, I’ve seen tulip trees on Earth and Mars exactly like this one. I simply can’t imagine that even convergent evolution could account for this degree of similarity.”

  Keto looked uncomfortable. “That’s a problem for the science staff, Kate. But even they are much more interested in the Earth corn, wheat, soybean and rice crops we grow than in local life forms. In our view and in the view of Earth it doesn’t matter much what the local life forms are or where they are originally from. What matters is bringing in the food crop for hungry Earth bellies.”

  Kate was familiar with speculation that Aves life originated on Earth or visa-versa, but she also knew that such theories had been quickly denied by the Aves scientific community and played down by the Federation and the official press. Now that she was seeing Aves first-hand, her first impression was that such speculation could have merit. Standard techniques such as genetic analysis must have quickly settled the issue, but as far as she knew no solid scientific results had been made public. Why?

  She would have discussed the issue with Keto, but several of the new arrivals were staring up into the tree and pointing. Kate followed their gaze and was startled to see, thirty meters abo
ve them on the lowest set of branches, what looked like several huge birds staring back at the humans.

  “They’re shy now folks; too many people,” said a uniformed man carrying a large plastic bag who had come out of the Op-Center to greet the new recruits. “But if you’ll stay quiet and avoid fast movements, I’ll show you what they look like up-close.” With that he walked out onto the lawn, dumped from the large bag dozens of rolls and loaves of bread over the grass, and returned to the crowd of newcomers.

  There were startled gasps from several people, and Kate looked up again to see one of the birds dropping gracefully down from the tree. It was huge. It had a wingspan of over three meters, and even with a stooped stance it stood more than a meter tall when it landed next to the bread. As it cocked its head and trained a large eye on the crowd, Kate recognized it to be some sort of sparrow, but hundreds of times larger than the tiny creatures she had seen in exhibits and aviaries on Earth and Mars.

  “CHEEEP,” it said shrilly, and four others immediately dropped down from above and joined it. In less than half a minute all the bread was gone; either gulped down in big chunks or carried off in huge beaks. Strangely, the first bird hadn’t taken any bread at all, but instead kept watch on its surroundings, including the humans. As it stood between them and the other birds, it cheeped almost continuously. It only flew away after the others had gone, following them towards a distant line of trees.

  “That was a sparrow, George,” Kate stated.

  “Yes, I’ve been told by others that they do look a lot like Earth sparrows,” agreed Keto. “Whatever they are, they’re harmless to humans, and they eat the damn bugs. You can’t yet imagine what a blessing that is.”

  “They’re wonderful,” said an excited woman standing nearby. Kate recognized her as one of the new farmers. “But they scare the hell out of me, they’re so big. Even with feathers, they must mass over thirty kilos apiece.”

  “Yeh,” seconded another farmer, a big hairy man with a deep booming voice. “In our training they said there used to be trouble with the birds, but now things are OK. Can you tell us more about that, Governor?”

  “Certainly. Some of the bigger birds used to be dangerous, but they’ve learned to stay away from us, and we've pretty much learned to stay away from them. The smaller ones come around regularly, but they don’t cause trouble. To the contrary, for about two Aves years now we’ve had a sort of understanding with them. We don’t kill birds anymore except in self-defense, and we let them eat the bugs and rodents in the fields and in our towns. They eat some of our crop also of course, but they protect a lot more for us to harvest. They let us clear the land and have most of the grain we grow. It benefits both us and the birds.”

  “An understanding with them?” asked the first woman. “That sounds like they’re intelligent.”

  “To a degree, they have to be,” said the uniformed man. “Smart as Earth dogs, perhaps. But they’re wild animals; never forget that.”

  “I seen real bees once,” said another woman, grinning. “My mama says there used to be bees all over Earth when she was a kid, and they could sting people. But if you let them be, they’d just go about their business and not bother folks. That’s what the training said to do with the birds and bugs here.”

  “Exactly right,” agreed the uniformed man. “I’ve been here almost two years, but I’ve followed that protocol and I've never had any trouble at all with birds or bugs. It takes a little while to get used to seeing them, that’s all.”

  “They flew away. Will they come back?” asked a man.

  “Not today,” replied the uniformed man. “No more ships coming in. They come when they see a ship land, because they know I’ll be out here with the bread, doing my little demo for newcomers like you folks. This close to the spaceport we chemically repel and if necessary poison the bugs, and there isn’t much plant-life except for this one tree, so the birds don’t have much to eat here. You’ll be getting some more lectures on insects and other nasty creatures, by the way. They’re actually more dangerous than the birds.”

  “Right. We heard that the bugs are big here too,” said a woman.

  “They’ll probably give you nightmares for a while,” confided the uniformed man. “But if you keep up with your daily protocol of bug repellent pills, they won’t come closer to you than several meters.”

  “What about that bird?” asked one of the men, who pointed up into the tree. Standing motionless on a lower branch as it stared back at the humans was a totally black bird, considerably larger than the other birds that they had previously seen.

  “Oh, that’s just Blackie,” laughed the uniformed man. “He just hangs out here a lot, watching. Nobody knows why.”

  The crowd gradually dispersed on foot, following directions provided on signs posted outside the Op-Center. Keto had disappeared. Kate stayed for a few more minutes, studying the tree and the lawn and the soil that they grew in. Soil was key from a biology perspective, she knew. On Mars, solar and chemically powered nanotechnology helped to break up rock, and bio-engineered microscopic life forms were used to provide most of the complex chemical changes, but here on Aves, Earth-like soil already existed in great abundance. Soil which, curiously enough, supported food crop plants imported from Earth to grow on Aves.

  As complex and specific as plant nutrient requirements were, how was such a thing possible? On Earth soil dwelling micro-organisms and plant life co-evolved over a couple of billion years in close symbiosis. How could the soil here be Earth-plant friendly? The odds against it seemed astronomical. Yet Earth crops thrived here which were intended for human consumption. How could crops that absorbed alien biologicals and associated chemicals be both safe and nutritious for Earth humans? The publicly stated explanation was again convergent evolution, which was said to result in life all over the universe that was by necessity very similar, given a strong similarity in environments.

  The required degree of convergence seemed absurd to Kate. Even if the general form of life on the two similar planets was very similar, the odds were strongly against multiple individual species on different worlds being identical except for size. Arbitrary differences in history should have led to some significant differences in basic life chemistry, as well as differences in the basic physical forms that the life took. Identity at the species level was totally absurd. But what she had seen so far appeared to be identical species except for size. Why?

  Kate’s visa assigned no place for her to go; it only named Weltman as her point of contact. Location was probably omitted because it was so obvious, she reasoned, as she continued along the road beyond the Operations Center. She saw no more birds, but she encountered dozens of people wearing work clothes; Corporation uniforms color coded to signify job and rank. Most wore wide brimmed hats that helped shade the bright suns. All of them were on their way somewhere; on foot, in primitive electric powered or alcohol powered vehicles, or even using human powered bicycles of a design centuries old.

  Noticeably absent from the people she encountered were the electronic ear-ware and eye-ware devices that billions of Earth people were addicted to. These people were not 'networked' the way that most Earth people were. On Aves they didn't have the infrastructure or time for such things. This was a frontier planet like Mars, where almost everyone was busy working. Kate liked that. On Earth most people sat on their duffs most of the time, and either wore rags or trendy, flashy clothes along with escapist networking devices. Earth was a dying planet, and not only because of ecology problems. Earth was mostly one gigantic, polluted slum, and the human spirit suffered as a result. ‘Failure to thrive’ is what the psychologists called it. Centuries earlier, the phenomenon was seen mostly within the big city slums, but now it was rampant everywhere on Earth. People were depressed; the entire human civilization on Earth was depressed. Off Earth everyone worked, and had survival and an improving future to thrive towards.

  Like Mars, Aves was a fresh, exciting new world. But there was something
very strange about Aves, something that already bothered Kate. As she walked she realized what it was. Aves was far too much like Earth, or rather, too much like Earth probably was many hundreds of years ago. She felt at home here far too quickly. She couldn't trust it; it seemed too good to be true.

  Kate hadn’t bothered to inquire for more information on her assignment at the Operations Center, since she knew exactly where she would have to be working. At five stories high the massive steel, glass, and ceramic Science Building towered over every other building in sight, and was only a short distance up the main road from the Operations Center. The building was simple in construction and new, reminding Kate of the utilitarian architecture on Mars.

  She entered and found herself in a small lobby, and in the presence of a bored looking, middle-aged woman receptionist sitting behind a small wooden desk. Posting a living receptionist behind a wooden desk seemed downright medieval. “Can I help you?” she asked Kate, with a too-wide smile.

  “Yes, thank you; I’m Dr. Katherine Deborg. I’m supposed to report to John Weltman.”

  “Yes, we’ve heard you were coming to Aves. Dr. Helmins wanted to see you personally if you happened to came here. I’ll ring him for you.”

  They heard she was coming? Dr. Helmins wanted to see her? If she happened to come here? Wasn’t she supposed to report here? She had heard that the entire science staff of Aves had offices and laboratories in this building; where else would she go? She knew that Dr. Helmins was the chief Corporation scientist and lead Corporation executive on Aves, since he appeared frequently in Federation-wide news stories. At some point she had hoped to meet him, but hadn’t expected to do so on her first day. The Governor, and now his counterpart in the Star Corporation’s bureaucracy, both wanted to see her. Why was she getting VIP treatment? “What about John Weltman? Is he available?”

  The woman again smiled but shrugged. “Oh, I wouldn’t know about that.”

  Before Kate could respond, a tall, thin, smiling, middle aged man appeared from out of the depths of the building. She recognized him immediately from training videos and from Earth and Mars-side news releases. “Dr. Deborg? Welcome to Aves. I’m Mark Helmins.” He held out his hand.

  Kate returned his smile, stepped towards him, and shook his hand firmly. “Thank you, Dr. Helmins; I’m very excited to be here on Aves. It’s a great honor to meet you, sir.”

  “George tells me that you don’t know why you’re here.”

  “He also said that I didn’t get assigned here through normal channels. As to what I’ll be doing, I’m of course anxious to know the details of my scientific assignment now that I’m here.”

  “Scientific assignment? In that regard I may have some unsettling news for you, I’m afraid.”

  “Unsettling?”

  Helmins ushered Kate into an office off the lobby, closed the door, then sat down in a wooden chair behind a small wooden desk, and motioned for her to sit in the chair that faced the desk. The office was small and bare; obviously not Helmins' actual workplace. Still, he looked more comfortable sitting behind a desk. “Yes. I’m afraid that your assignment is not a scientific one; or at least it is not an assignment within our Corporation scientific community here.”

  Kate felt like she had been slapped across the face. Her assignment was not a scientific one? “I don’t understand; there must be some mistake.”

  “I’m afraid not. I wanted to greet you as a matter of professional courtesy, but you are not being assigned to work with my science staff. Do you even know who John Weltman is? Have you ever heard of him?”

  “No. I just naturally assumed that he was part of your senior science staff and that he had an office and laboratory in this building.”

  “I’m afraid not. John Weltman is our Sheriff here on Aves.”

  “Your what?”

  “Sheriff. An antiquated term. An elected official that is supposed to keep the peace.”

  “You mean a public arbitrator? A policeman?”

  “More or less. Mostly less, actually; most of the real policing on Aves is done by the Corporation security force. The Sheriff position is largely an honorary one.”

  Kate was still in a state of shock. “But I don’t understand. What am I doing here?”

  “Weltman has some strange ideas, I’m afraid. He wanted us to help him with them, but it wasn’t anything that the Corporation was interested in pursuing with him. So he took advantage of a little known Federation law that allows any off-Earth elected official to ask directly for help from the Space Directorate.”

  “Help? Help for what? What strange ideas?”

  “I think he should be the one to tell you those details. But let me ask you something, if I may. Do you know why the Space Directorate picked you for this assignment?”

  “Right now I don’t have the slightest idea.”

  “Our sources say that your doctorate is in exoplanetary biology. What is your specialization?”

  “I wouldn’t say that I even have one yet.”

  “I see. But you find Aves life interesting?”

  She nodded. “Of course I do. Very interesting, but also very puzzling. Since I got here, I’ve seen nothing but Earth species, or at least outwardly they look exactly like Earth species, though in gigantic form. How can that possibly be explained?”

  “We have some ideas on that, but I’m not at liberty to divulge them.”

  “You’re not at liberty to divulge them?”

  “I’m afraid not. Doing science within a corporation is a little different from doing it in a university or government environment. Eventually, when we’re sure about our facts, we’ll publish our findings, of course. But I believe George also mentioned the need to go through channels here?”

  “He did so most explicitly.”

  “Well, in addition to that, you won’t generally have access to our scientific work here, which is proprietary to the Corporation, though if you do have specific questions, feel free to get in touch with my office and I'll see what I can do.” He stood up, shook Kate’s hand, and ushered her out of the office and into the lobby, signaling an abrupt end to a very unsettling discussion. “Good luck!” he added, as he departed through a door into the bowels of the building.

  Dismissed, Kate was left alone in the lobby. She stood in shock for a few minutes before moving towards the exit.

  “The Sheriff Office is easy to find; simply continue along this road to the edge of town and you can’t miss it,” added the receptionist with the fake smile when Kate walked past her desk. Kate was too numb to respond.

  She exited the Science Center shaking her head, so stunned that anger came only slowly as she mentally digested her situation. No access to scientific work? So why the hell was she here on Aves? What did a sheriff need a scientist for? She had been looking forward to this assignment as something that would be truly extraordinary, something that would advance her career. Now those hopes had been shattered.

  As she walked away she happened to look across the narrow street at the Brethren Meeting House, taking in its old-fashioned appearance. It looked exactly like the Brethren Meeting Houses on Earth, all gaudy with steeples and spires. It struck her that it was a large church, given the sparse population of Aves.

  Only thirty meters from her atop one of the lower church spires perched Blackie, or a bird very similar to Blackie. This close she could see it in frightening detail. It was all black, but in the full light of the suns the feathers had a green and purplish sheen to them, which she knew was caused by the diffraction of sunlight by its feathers. The bird looked amazingly like a once-common Earth blackbird, the grackle. Its size was startling; its body mass must have been at least twice that of a large man, though the layers of feathers that covered it made it appear much larger. Its thirty centimeter-long beak looked capable of deadly force, as did the powerful talon-tipped toes that it used to cling to the spire.

  Even more startling, as Kate looked at it in wonder she quickly realized that it was sta
ring back at her ... a sharp piercing gaze that suggested keen alien intelligence. The bird’s cold eyes followed her every footstep away from the Science Center.

  ****