Chapter 15

It was a real pleasure working with the people of Humanity First! They were an action oriented bunch that knew what they wanted and were willing to work hard to get it. So far, we had placed 15 groups on their own planets and group number 16 was presenting a challenge. The specifications called for a planet like Bar-B-Que, and I was sorry that this group had not surfaced when that planet was found. Well, Space Exploration, LLC, was doing what it could to help them out, and we knew a planet like what they wanted had to be around somewhere, what with the billions of possibilities.

They were looking for a habitable planet with open plains covered with grass. This group was a bunch of people from Mongolia who wanted to return to the days of simple nomadic life on the steppes. They had come up with nearly 10,000 people who wanted to try it out, though I wondered how many would stick to it once the reality hit. Not only did we have to ferry the people, but there were horses and cattle to move, too. I couldn't help laughing about the arguments over whether they should give up their TVs and computers.

Well, we found a planet for them that was almost perfectly Earth-like, except that the winters were a little colder than they were used to, and the years were 497 days long, with a day being 15.7 hours long. The physicians and psychologists were certain that they could acclimate themselves to those changes within a few years. Of course, we left them an FTL radio so that they could call for help if something untenable came up, but they were warned that they would forfeit their bond if they gave up too easily.

Most of the people were serious about the change in life style and took to the nomadic life as if they had been born to it. Out of 10,142 original settlers, 217 just couldn't take it and asked to be returned home to city life. We thought that only a shade over 2% was a very good failure rate for such a radical change in life style, and we considered this a successful relocation.

The Mongol Hoard as they laughingly called themselves were one of the most successful of our efforts, if one considers only the results from day one. Some of the other relocations were harder to get established, either from a poor choice of planet or from a poor selection of settlers.

The prime example of this was an experiment carried out by a confederation of South American countries. Normally, these countries got along fairly well with only a few dust ups on occasion, but this was something that they all agreed on. Only the countries with Spanish as the primary language were associated on this, so the problem of a common language was eliminated, but that was only one of the minor problems.

Somebody sold them on the idea of establishing a penal colony on an appropriate planet. The idea was that they would flush their prisons of all inmates with life sentences or shorter sentences on convictions for rape, murder, etc. What Humanity First! missed was that there was going to be no effort to control the more violent transportees after they were dumped on the planet.

The planet in question was reasonably Earth-like, but it had a gravity of 1.15 g. That 15% increase in gravity could be devastating to somebody who had been confined to a jail cell for several years. At the time, no other group was interested, because of the extra gravity, in what came to be known as Devil's Island. Oh, well, "What else could hardened criminals expect from their victims?" appeared to be the attitude from the governments involved.

Mostly male, but a few female, prisoners were dumped at various places around the globe, given some seeds and farm implements, and left to sink or swim on their own. There was absolute chaos at first, as the stronger and more ruthless ex-prisoners started preying on their companions. Slavery was quite common, and many of the weaker men were worked to death. The women who could be found were usually taken as sex slaves, and few of them lasted very long, either.

It took only two years for the population to drop to 12% of the original number of transportees, and these were isolated into groups who would attempt to kill each other on sight. The only sanity to be found on Devil's Island was organized by Juan Alvera, a former special forces officer in the Argentine Army.

Juan Alvera wound up on Devil's Island from a conviction for double murder. He had been out in the field on an Army exercise, but rotated home unexpectedly. He thought that he would surprise his wife by showing up when she was not expecting him. That part of the joke went off as planned, but when Juan got home, he found his wife and "best friend" in bed together. Juan blew his top and killed them both. His commanding officer, whose niece had been Juan's wife, decided to go for vengeance, so Juan received two consecutive life terms without parole.

Juan had, in self defense, made himself the chief of his group of prisoners and enforced a rule of order among his fellows. They happened across some women, and Juan wound up sort of married to one of them. Other women married the men in a polyandrous relationship, and they settled down to a manageable life. Unfortunately, another, much less civilized, group found them and a major fight ensued. Juan's group won the fight, but there were fatalities on both sides.

The attacking group was now too small to survive on its own, so they were accepted into Juan's camp, though on a lower status. Most of these men worked their way into full acceptance, and the group grew to be a formidable size as new members gradually joined.

There were no guns or swords on the planet, but Juan armed his men with clubs and flint-tipped spears. This made them more than a match for any of the other bands, and Juan went on to control the large island he was on. Later transportees begged to be put in with Juan's group, and he gradually became more and more powerful. By the time he died of old age, Juan had civilized most of the planet, and was actually loved and revered by practically everyone on Devil's Island. His legacy of civilization survived and was perpetuated by his descendants.

We still had not run up against a hostile alien force that we could not outrun, so we were able to spend several years in our colonization efforts without being involved in a real problem. One day, it happened, but not as we would have expected. I was piloting the Emily VI through a planetary system looking for planets we could colonize when we encountered a strange sight. We had decided to run with the defense shield up, but with the cloaking turned off, so that we would be easy to spot if there were any sentients on the planet. We hoped to make contact with any friendly people that we could find.

We cruised passed a planet that more resembled Mars than Earth, when we were greeted by the sight of a ship approaching us. At least, we assumed that it was a spaceship. It was painted a bright red, and had a spiral pattern of yellow stripes on it. I had no idea what the colors represented, but I was sure that the color scheme was intended to attract our attention.

The ship appeared to be driven by chemical rockets, which meant that it did not have FTL capability. If they had FTL capability, they would be using gravity-assisted drive, and it was obvious that this one was driven only by chemical rockets. QED: It did not have FTL capability.

I reported back to Auburn what was going on and that I was planning to rendezvous with the ship. I had one of the new translating machines with me, so this would be a good opportunity to give it a rigorous field test.

As part of our normal survey instrumentation, we carried a radio receiver that would scan the entire radio spectrum for significant radiation, so we quickly picked up what seemed to be a broadcast from the alien ship. I had the sound put on the ship's speaker so that we could all hear what was coming from the other ship. It was totally unintelligible, but the sound was in the range of that normally used by humans. OK, that was a good sign.

The broadcast was interrupted at regular intervals as if the speaker was waiting for us to reply. When one of the breaks came along, I keyed the microphone and said, "This is the captain of the Earth ship Emily VI. How may we help you?" This was repeated four times, then a series of clicks were heard. There was one click, a pause, two clicks, a pause, three clicks, a pause, etc. until there were 12 clicks. Then the sequence was repeated. I tried a similar sequence, but announced the number, in English, as I clicked for each one. I did this twice, and waited for something to happen. The person from the other ship copied my action, but said different words after each set of clicks.

The technician operating the machine had entered the sounds from the speaker into the translator, so when it was my turn, I replied with the clicks, followed by his word from the translator, then my word for the number. I hoped that this would indicate that we wanted to learn to talk to the aliens.

Shortly after that last broadcast, the alien ship appeared to try to move closer to us. Why not? We could not be breached by any weapon or by accident, so I was willing to let them get closer. We got as close as what in space was suicidally close, and a long tube was extended from the hull of the other ship. What!?! Did they want to make a personal transfer from ship to ship?