Chapter 7

During those three months, we often discussed what we would do when the people showed up from Earth to claim the ogre spaceship. We discussed our alternatives when that happened, and we agreed that we would surrender the ogre spaceship without argument. Our real problem was what to do when they ordered us to return to Earth. We were more than happy with our current living arrangements, and had no wish to change them.

Our conversations finally resolved themselves into a decision to declare our independence from Earth. We had been told by AI that we could not live without food originating on Wolf, so we dared not leave the planet for an extended period. Furthermore, as soon as the big shots back on Earth saw what physical changes had happened to us, they would slap us into laboratories and do everything they could to figure out how to make the same changes in their soldiers without shipping them to Wolf.

We figured that we would not survive the tests and what not that were run on us, so we were not going to let that happen. We wrote up our own Declaration of Independence from Earth, and I was going to send it to them by FTL radio before they had a chance to preempt us. AI could transport me back to our old base for the call and return me here all in the same day. By the way, we did not want to bring an FTL radio from base to our new home because the humans might be able to trace the signal and find our home.

Anyway, I jumped back to use the FTL radio to make that transmission to Earth. The other three went with me so that they could all say in their own voices that they concurred in our rebellion. That way, no politician on Earth could say that I had faked the agreements by the others. All of the voices would be on the recording. Furthermore, Sue, who had the best penmanship, wrote out the Declaration of Independence on a piece of paper which we all signed. We left that copy in the base radio room next to the FTL radio where we were sure that it would be found.

When I sent the message to Earth, I gave a time when I would check on the FTL radio to pick up any reply that they might send. I didn't expect a reply, but who could tell? If there was a reply, we expected it to be a demand that we surrender ourselves for arrest and return to Earth to stand trial for desertion.

Two weeks later, I transported back to the radio room to pick up the reply, if any. Well, we received the reply, and it was exactly what we expected. We four were ordered to present ourselves for arrest for desertion. Ha, fat chance of that! The message further threatened us with pursuit if we tried to escape.

We had not decided what to do if they tried to pursue us for arrest. We could just disappear, we could surrender, or we could fight. Neither one of the first two options appealed to any of us, so it looked like we would have to fight if the humans did not leave us alone. AI promised to warn us of a human landing on Wolf, and Jim bugged the old base with devices supplied by AI so that we could follow their intentions toward us. All we could do now was to wait and see what happened. None of us were very optimistic because we knew that the humans had no idea of the conditions on Wolf, nor would they believe them if they did.

In our sixth month at our new home, AI informed us that Sharon was pregnant, and her egg would be dropped in six-month's time. "Her egg!?" That was when AI got around to informing us of the changes in our reproductive system. We men would not notice any practical changes, but the women would experience a radical change. Namely, the women would be laying eggs instead of producing the kind of babies that they had expected.

AI explained that the egg would have an extensible shell and would not harden until one month before the baby was hatched. When delivered by the mother, the egg would be soft and not much larger than an egg produced by a chicken back on Earth. The egg would be nourished in a liquid solution after the mother delivered it. During that time, the egg would expand as the baby grew until it got to be the size of a basketball, whereupon, the shell would harden so that the baby could break out when it was time.

AI insisted that we did not have to worry about the details. He was fully equipped to handle all kinds of emergencies as well as a normal birth. This was the way the original inhabitants of Wolf had reproduced, and it had worked well for them for millennia, so AI expected no problems. The women had mixed feelings about this, but we men were just fascinated by the whole thing. I was reminded of the platypus back on Earth.

The baby would still nurse at the woman's breast after it hatched from the egg, so it was just the getting that far that was different. AI assured us all that giving birth was essentially painless because of the small size of the exiting egg, and the woman's belly would hardly swell at all during the process. That meant that the woman could function normally up to the day she expelled the egg. The only question left was what day should we fix on as the baby's birth: the day the woman expelled it or the day it hatched? We discussed that for a long time, but finally settled on calling its birthday as the one on which it hatched.

The other question we debated was just how we were going to treat the late arriving humans. We assumed that they would go through pretty much the same conversion process that we had experienced. It just did not seem likely that the people on Earth had learned anything from what had happened to us, so we could expect some new recruits about two months or so after the humans landed.

We decided that we would accept them into our community with full privileges just as long as they did nothing to endanger us. Otherwise, they would just have to survive on their own. We really did need more people in our community because four people were just not enough to do everything that we wanted to do.

For one thing, we would need babysitting services as our community grew. At least, we would not need conventional schools because AI said that the teaching machines could be programmed for young children. However, we would have to prepare the stuff we wanted the kids to learn. It would not be sensible to teach them just what was in the old learning banks held over from the original inhabitants. They needed to learn why we were here and why we had broken away from Earth. Some of Earth's history would be valuable; if nothing else, it would help to keep them from making some of the same mistakes.

Our lives rocked along while we waited for the humans to land. There was no more communication with Earth after reception of the surrender order. We figured that there was just no point in doing that. The main thing we did was to survey the current surface of Wolf. All of the information that AI had dated from when the original inhabitants had lived here.

AI had the robots build some drones that made a thorough photographic map of the surface of Wolf. We compared that to the old maps, and found several cities that we thought would be worth investigating after the question of the humans was settled. AI said that, as far as he knew, most of the cities had been abandoned in a kind of panic when word of the gamma-ray burst was spread. Therefore, he did not know how much material had been left behind. Surely, the technical side of the civilization had been preserved in detail, but there might well be art objects and literature left behind when the people panicked.

As a matter of prudence, we had all learned to read the language of the original Wolfians, so we were anxious to see what might still be preserved in their libraries. Naturally, paper records would be long gone, but there might well be electronic records that had survived. For that matter, just seeing their libraries and museums would tell us a lot about the people who were now considered to be our ancestors. Our primate curiosity was driving us to investigate those ancient cities, and we could not rest until we had given it a try.