1: Home (a.k.a The Short Boring Chapter Before the Women Arrive)

Home (a.k.a The Short Boring Chapter Before the Women Arrive)

“Say what?” I balked.

The slightly pudgy Space Agency case supervisor pushed his glasses up his nose and repeated:

“You’re in. Pending your final confirmation, you’ve been assigned a planet and your settlement application has been approved.”

“Huh. You know, when I applied, I didn’t think I’d actually make it.”

“Yes, I know. The psych team mentioned your pessimism.” He pointed at his monitor.

“I mean, you people say anyone can apply –”

“Because you can.”

“– but I still thought actual colonists would be top-flight scientists and survivalists.”

“We offer on-the-job training.” He grinned weakly at his own practiced joke. “Anyway, it’s not as restrictive a group as you might think. You had the grades until you gave up and physically the doctors say all you need is exercise, which you’ll be getting plenty of over there.”

“So what, this is going to be colony Burnout Prime? Dump all the slackers onto one rock and come back in a year to see if we’ve unpacked?”

“Actually, smartass, the system’s called Freya. The second planet is old and a bit low on oxygen, but it already has a thriving carbon-based ecosystem.” He spun his monitor around to display a gently rotating orange-and-blue globe. Not that I’d have admitted it to his smug face, but I fell in love with the place at first sight. He continued:

“The way we see it, you did not reach your potential on Earth because of an incompatibility with Earth. We think a fresh start will allow you to grow.” After a thoughtful second, he added: “Also, when it comes down to it, most people talk a big game about adventuring to the stars, but few are willing to leave everything they know behind to risk their necks on an unknown planet. Myself included. I will admit I’m perfectly content here on the old Homo sapient homestead. But you ... you’re not, are you?”

I slumped in my seat, still tracking the orbital view of clouds sweeping over alien, orange continents. Finally I sighed.

“No, I’m not. When do we leave?”

“Decisive! See, I knew the psych gang were right about you.”

Training took a month. I never even got to see Earth from space. They disinfected us one last time, pumped us full of hibernation drugs and packed us into cold sleep canisters like sardines in a cannery, on an assembly line no less. I never even saw the big carrier that whisked our lander fifty years into the future, a thousand light-years away, one of hundreds of scattered colonies of Terran monkeys making their galactic land grab. Next thing I knew I felt air rushing over my naked form as my canister was opened, struggling to lift my eyelids. A steady palm slapped my cheek a couple of times.

“Hello there. Can you tell me your name?”

“Huzuh? Nem?” Groggy would’ve been a step up from my current state.

“Yes. What is your name?” The voice with a Chinese accent insisted.

“Ummm, Adam. Adam Eden.”

“Yes, good. And can you tell me where you are, Adam?”

“Spaceship.”

“Hah. Not any more. Guess.”

“Planet?” I focused on his face. Huang, his name was. Our designated doctor.

“Which planet?” He keyed some instructions into the panel affixed to the outside of my sleep chamber. The intravenous lines in my arms and legs flowed a bit more briskly.

“F-Freya t-two?” I found I was beginning to shiver.

“Good. Good. I must check the others. You will need this.”

He slipped a sheet of rubber into my teeth just as I began shaking from head to toe. Sensation returned to my naked body in the form of exhaustion, nausea and chills. I remembered the plan now. Our lander was little more than a gigantic lumpy metal cube with parachutes and rockets attached. It had been teleoperated down from orbit, a one-way trip, with only the doctors awake. The ship would already be on its way out of system, leaving us on our own. Gradually my misery waned. Huang returned to remove my I.V.s. As my shivering subsided I noticed the walls were flapping. One of the lander’s sides telescoped out into an airtight framework for a multilayered tent of sorts, and all of our sleep tubes had been dragged out into it. I seemed to be the first awake aside from the doctors. Still shivering and woozy, I levered myself out of my tube and padded along the cold metal floor to the nearest porthole in the tent’s sheeting.

Outside, the light had the tinge of a winter afternoon, illuminated by a sun weaker and softer than old Sol. A river snaked far into the distance through gently undulating plains. The lander lay atop a modest plateau. Short, patchy, scrubby ground cover vegetation stretched in all directions, waving in the breeze undisturbed by any sign of animal life. I felt like crying. Beautiful, all of it. Beautiful.

I was home.

We found better cause for crying soon enough. Pascal (our psychiatrist who doubled as our backup doctor) and Huang called me to supervise the others’ awakening while they fussed over one particular cylinder whose occupant failed to revive. Finally, defeated, we left it closed. It would only be the first of our casualties.

The lander with its attached tent became Habitat One. A beachhead crew of seventeen men plus an unspeakable clutter of supplies and equipment crammed in every which way were meant to assure a basic infrastructure for the main shipment of construction equipment in six months. Only after a year would the bulk of colonists begin to arrive by the hundred as carriers continued to pass through the system. The sheer distances and time skip involved in interstellar travel prevented any alteration of this schedule. Our companions were already on their way, had left Earth behind us decades ago in fact.

Exhausted from fifty years’ sleep, we initially collapsed. Then we were motivated to unpack by ravenous hunger, and when the inevitable consequences of eating began over-taxing Habitat One’s chemical toilets we realized step zero should’ve been latrines. We asked Jerome, a spindly little black bayou-born former oil rig technician who happened to be entrusted with inventorying our supplies, for some digging machinery. He nodded sagely, rummaged through one of the gigantic piles of materials and held up ... a spade. Small, lightweight, streamlined carbon-titanium honeycombed polymer, very space-age in make yet still quite unmistakably a garden spade. We stared at him slack-jawed.