Neighbors (3)
Nov. 8th, 2011 01:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolI think one more piece after this.
Neutralizing the 581c raiders was straightforward. It would have been more straightforward if Zhizhi hadn't insisted on capturing one of them alive. Of course, then she left the determining of how to go about this to Korda. Korda often felt like the team janitor.
Korda decided that capturing a Gliese 581c Space Viking was a hazardous proposition. With a 1.5G surface gravity and a superabundant oxygen mix, 581c probably spawned natives who would be extremely dangerous if allowed to get up in one's grille. Added to this was the virtual certainty that the raiders were hopped up on some kind of stimulant and battle-rage, and they had already decided this was a suicide mission, so they had no reason to hold back and nothing to lose. Lovely, Korda thought.
Fortunately, the Earth mission had superior technology on their side. Korda disabled the rocket-propelled battering ram with a kinetic weapon, firing a stream of solid iron 1/2" diameter bearings at the craft at 100 km/sec speeds. This chopped the enemy craft into bits and hamburgered a number of passengers in the bargain, but the lack of a concentrated explosion simply scattered the rest of the riders helplessly into space.
Korda chose to rescue one of them on the sole basis that he had lost his poleaxe. Korda didn't like the look of those weapon/tool combinations. He cornered Matsen while prepping the shuttle.
"I need a tranquilizer," he said, zooming the opticals on the target. The suited 581c raider was doing cartwheels through space.
"How much tranquilizer?" Matsen asked.
Korda zoomed in on the helmet of the tumbling alien. He was young, with long blond braids, and his lips looked very red against his pale skin. He was shouting something, cursing with all his might, and there were flecks of froth around his mouth.
"How much you got?" Korda asked.
In the end, Korda had shot the Viking with enough depressant to stun a horse. This was literal; Matsen arrived at the dosage by looking at old veterinary references. Korda grabbed the tumbling man with the shuttle arm, drilled through his armored vacc suit, and jabbed him with a kludged-together needle through a suit patch. The dosage still wasn't enough to completely knock the fellow out, although his ravings turned to mumblings and his eyes closed entirely.
Korda reeled the alien in and cut the suit off his body. The 581c native opened his eyes and barked like a dog. Korda was in no mood to take chances and hit him with a stunrod. That put him down.
Back on _Sagan_, Matsen looked at the alien in the MRI while Gold ran the biochemistry. "Same story, near as I can tell," he reported to the crew. "Completely human. There are a few key differences; his heart has about twice the displacement of a normal human organ, and his bone density is higher. These are probably explainable by dint of living on a higher gravity world."
"Also," added Gold, "the mitochondrial DNA says he's even more closely related to us than the 581g natives. Closest match is Northern European."
Zhizhi nodded. "Wake him up," she said.
"Oh no you don't," Korda said. "Not aboard my ship; not until we make sure he's secured. And as far as I know, while _Sagan_ is pretty well stocked, we don't have anything like handcuffs aboard."
In the end they epoxied the alien's hands and feet to large free weights, then picked him up with the cargo bay's electromagnetic crane. Matsen hit the Viking with a stimulant. He came around within five seconds, and was spitting and cursing within ten.
"I'll bet," Vrouw said, "that I can get the computer to listen to this business, compare it to what we think we know about various European languages, and have it spit out a rough translation."
"That would be great," said Gold. "I've always wanted to know what an alien thinks about my mother."
It only took about an hour of listening to the alien before the computer started printing out intelligible things. Fortunately the young 581c-er had a seemingly inexhaustible store of vile things to say. "Looks like the closest match is Icelandic," said Vrouw. "It's reasonably close, but there's a lot of drift. Let's see if it works in reverse." He spoke carefully into a microphone.
"You are," Vrouw said, "a maggot."
The Viking stared, stunned, and then replied with equal care. "You talk like a maggot taught you to speak," he said. "Or a witch, since you speak out of a box."
"There, it's working," said Vruow with satisfaction. He handed the microphone over to Zhizhi. "You now have the ability to communicate with one very hostile, somewhat stupid alien. Good luck with that."
"Oh, now your women will talk for you," scoffed the Viking. "Is that how you plan to kill me – by making me listen to the talk of women?"
"We're not going to kill you," said Zhizhi. "We're going to take you home. What is your name?"
This was plainly not what the alien had expected to hear. "Gunnar," he said, startled that anybody would even ask.
"Good. I'm Zhizhi," she said. "We're not here to make war against you."
"Of course you aren't," scoffed Gunnar. "You're weak. Weak people don't make war; they do tricky things to kill you."
Zhizhi nodded. "I'm going to do something tricky," she said. "I'm going to tell you some facts about your peoples' history, even though I've never met your kind before now. I know, for instance, that you're travelers. As far back as your histories stretch, you have tales of your ancestors crossing the sea in search of new places."
Gunnar snorted. "I thought this was supposed to be trickery," he said. "This sounds more like flattery."
"Your ancestors found a new place," continued Zhizhi. "They called it 'Vinland'."
Gunnar frowned. "You're pronouncing it wrong," he complained.
"It doesn't matter," said Zhizhi. "We have a different name for the place: America. In ancient times your people crossed the sea to find that place, because nobody had travelled so far before. And then they left that place, because they had an opportunity to travel much, much farther."
"That's right," said Gunnar. "The Starwhales came. They spoke to Old Klimmet in his mind and spoke to him about travel through the stars. How could he refuse? Travelling through space to colonize new worlds – that would be the stuff of legends. And it was!"
"So they took you to your world," Zhizhi said. "What do you call it?"
"Ilsse," said Gunnar. "The White Lady."
"And you made a colony there," continued Zhizhi. "You lived much as you always had, back in the other place. But then you discovered you were not alone."
"The men of Ugghu, the Black Hen," spat Gunnar. "They came in their spacecraft. They were as weak as you. We killed them."
"Why?" pressed Zhizhi. "Why did you kill them?"
"Why not?" Gunnar shrugged as best he could in his constrained condition. "Because they wanted our land and women? Because we wanted their ships? Because they were different."
"So Ilsse warred upon Ugghu, and vice versa," said Zhizhi.
"That's so," said Gunnar. "They had magic like you. We captured them anyway, and made them show us how to make ships like theirs. Most of their magic was not worth studying, but the people of Ilsse are wanderers. We took to space flight like ducks to water. From time to time we bring the war to Ugghu, just to show them they're weak. They fight like cowards and we die like heroes. Ugghu has not invaded Ilsse for a long, long time."
"But you have no radios," said Zhizhi. "How did you know when we arrived in this star system?"
"We're not idiots," said Gunnar. "We watch the skies with telescopes, mainly to watch for Ugghu invasions, but also to study the other planets. You never know when the Starwhales will return to take us back to Vinland so we can boast of our accomplishments there. Or, sometimes other threats come. So, when we saw the burn of your engine, we knew something new had come. Fifteen warbands formed to confront this new threat. Two went to attack Ugghu, to show them we are still stronger than they are, and remind them of the consequences of trying any funny stuff. The remaining bands came here, to confront you."
"Why fight?" cut in Zenia. "Why not talk peacefully?"
"See, that's exactly what weak people say," said Gunnar, amused. "Strong people always fight first. It sends an important message: we're ready to fight and die. Then, if it seems appropriate, one may choose to parlay instead of fighting further. That initial sacrifice repays itself many times over; an enemy will be afraid of you, and others will be glad to call you friend."
"Sounds like good advice," said Korda.
"You mentioned that sometimes other threats come," said Zhizhi. "What other threats?"
"Well," said Gunnar, "A long time ago there were the Green Heads."
**
_Sagan_ burned again, looping around the outside of the system in a broad ellipse before falling inward again on the far side. Gliese 581d was there, a lovely pale green bauble with whitish sworls.
"It looks like a gas giant," said Zenia, watching the disc grow in the observation lounge.
"It's definitely not one," replied Liang. "The density is far too high. It has a thick atmosphere, true, but there's a rocky planet down below it. The total mass of 581d is about ten Earth masses."
As _Sagan_ approached the planet, and Korda calculated the appropriate angle of attack to enter the atmosphere without bouncing off of it, Matsen squinted at the primary star. Even though the orbital radius of 581d was only half that of Earth's, the red ball of Gliese 581 was still a small, pathetic sight. The star could be looked at with the naked eye, and it shed much less light than the Sun. The red illumination turned the green sunward surface of the atmosphere a sickly grey.
"How can such a small sun possibly give off enough radiation to make this planet habitable?" Matsen wondered.
"The greenhouse effect works in our favor here," replied Matsen. "With a thick enough atmosphere, CO2 levels can rise and heat can be trapped. This allows the Goldilocks zone to expand beyond the distances that we would ordinarily use if there were a simple blackbody problem."
_Sagan_ punched through the clouds. The white sworls turned out to be water vapor; the green was something else and had a delicate crystalline structure that shattered as the ship dove through it. The dense cloud layer was several kilometers thick, but then a region of clear air existed all the way down to the planet's surface. The entire crew gasped.
A broad green sea covered virtually the entire surface of the world. Only a few islands dotted here and there stippled the ocean, which was wrinkled with an elaborate pattern of white-capped waves.
"Gunnar says we're looking for a long chain of islands," reported Zhizhi from the cargo bay. After his initial disdain for women, Gunnar had proved remarkably eager to talk with her.
"How did you come to fight with these Green Heads?" asked Korda over the comm.
"Oh, well, a fight was inevitable," replied Gunnar. "The Green Heads were strong, not weak like the Ugghas. When they came to Ilsse, we fought. When we came here, we fought. We fought for a long time, because they were very strong and could keep fighting for a long time. They fought so long and so well that we killed all of them."
"There it is," said Korda. The archipelago was shaped like a question mark and showed definite signs of having been reshaped by intelligent hands. _Sagan_ swooped down and landed on a flat patch in the middle of the largest island; vegetation had reclaimed it, and was steadily tugging down the walls and low towers that broke up its otherwise smooth outline.
Korda walked down the ramp with Zenia to look around. They found the first Green Head lying on the sand near an estuary. It was a giant stone statue, its impassive features staring up at the green sky. Korda had seen pictures of the Easter Island statues before. These were very close.
"Somebody is starting a collection of Earth prehistoric cultures," mused Zenia.
"They're doing a lousy job of keeping their collection safe," observed Korda.
"Maybe that's why we're here," said Zenia. "To replace this world that died."
"That better not be it," said Korda. "We're not butterflies. We sting."
Neutralizing the 581c raiders was straightforward. It would have been more straightforward if Zhizhi hadn't insisted on capturing one of them alive. Of course, then she left the determining of how to go about this to Korda. Korda often felt like the team janitor.
Korda decided that capturing a Gliese 581c Space Viking was a hazardous proposition. With a 1.5G surface gravity and a superabundant oxygen mix, 581c probably spawned natives who would be extremely dangerous if allowed to get up in one's grille. Added to this was the virtual certainty that the raiders were hopped up on some kind of stimulant and battle-rage, and they had already decided this was a suicide mission, so they had no reason to hold back and nothing to lose. Lovely, Korda thought.
Fortunately, the Earth mission had superior technology on their side. Korda disabled the rocket-propelled battering ram with a kinetic weapon, firing a stream of solid iron 1/2" diameter bearings at the craft at 100 km/sec speeds. This chopped the enemy craft into bits and hamburgered a number of passengers in the bargain, but the lack of a concentrated explosion simply scattered the rest of the riders helplessly into space.
Korda chose to rescue one of them on the sole basis that he had lost his poleaxe. Korda didn't like the look of those weapon/tool combinations. He cornered Matsen while prepping the shuttle.
"I need a tranquilizer," he said, zooming the opticals on the target. The suited 581c raider was doing cartwheels through space.
"How much tranquilizer?" Matsen asked.
Korda zoomed in on the helmet of the tumbling alien. He was young, with long blond braids, and his lips looked very red against his pale skin. He was shouting something, cursing with all his might, and there were flecks of froth around his mouth.
"How much you got?" Korda asked.
In the end, Korda had shot the Viking with enough depressant to stun a horse. This was literal; Matsen arrived at the dosage by looking at old veterinary references. Korda grabbed the tumbling man with the shuttle arm, drilled through his armored vacc suit, and jabbed him with a kludged-together needle through a suit patch. The dosage still wasn't enough to completely knock the fellow out, although his ravings turned to mumblings and his eyes closed entirely.
Korda reeled the alien in and cut the suit off his body. The 581c native opened his eyes and barked like a dog. Korda was in no mood to take chances and hit him with a stunrod. That put him down.
Back on _Sagan_, Matsen looked at the alien in the MRI while Gold ran the biochemistry. "Same story, near as I can tell," he reported to the crew. "Completely human. There are a few key differences; his heart has about twice the displacement of a normal human organ, and his bone density is higher. These are probably explainable by dint of living on a higher gravity world."
"Also," added Gold, "the mitochondrial DNA says he's even more closely related to us than the 581g natives. Closest match is Northern European."
Zhizhi nodded. "Wake him up," she said.
"Oh no you don't," Korda said. "Not aboard my ship; not until we make sure he's secured. And as far as I know, while _Sagan_ is pretty well stocked, we don't have anything like handcuffs aboard."
In the end they epoxied the alien's hands and feet to large free weights, then picked him up with the cargo bay's electromagnetic crane. Matsen hit the Viking with a stimulant. He came around within five seconds, and was spitting and cursing within ten.
"I'll bet," Vrouw said, "that I can get the computer to listen to this business, compare it to what we think we know about various European languages, and have it spit out a rough translation."
"That would be great," said Gold. "I've always wanted to know what an alien thinks about my mother."
It only took about an hour of listening to the alien before the computer started printing out intelligible things. Fortunately the young 581c-er had a seemingly inexhaustible store of vile things to say. "Looks like the closest match is Icelandic," said Vrouw. "It's reasonably close, but there's a lot of drift. Let's see if it works in reverse." He spoke carefully into a microphone.
"You are," Vrouw said, "a maggot."
The Viking stared, stunned, and then replied with equal care. "You talk like a maggot taught you to speak," he said. "Or a witch, since you speak out of a box."
"There, it's working," said Vruow with satisfaction. He handed the microphone over to Zhizhi. "You now have the ability to communicate with one very hostile, somewhat stupid alien. Good luck with that."
"Oh, now your women will talk for you," scoffed the Viking. "Is that how you plan to kill me – by making me listen to the talk of women?"
"We're not going to kill you," said Zhizhi. "We're going to take you home. What is your name?"
This was plainly not what the alien had expected to hear. "Gunnar," he said, startled that anybody would even ask.
"Good. I'm Zhizhi," she said. "We're not here to make war against you."
"Of course you aren't," scoffed Gunnar. "You're weak. Weak people don't make war; they do tricky things to kill you."
Zhizhi nodded. "I'm going to do something tricky," she said. "I'm going to tell you some facts about your peoples' history, even though I've never met your kind before now. I know, for instance, that you're travelers. As far back as your histories stretch, you have tales of your ancestors crossing the sea in search of new places."
Gunnar snorted. "I thought this was supposed to be trickery," he said. "This sounds more like flattery."
"Your ancestors found a new place," continued Zhizhi. "They called it 'Vinland'."
Gunnar frowned. "You're pronouncing it wrong," he complained.
"It doesn't matter," said Zhizhi. "We have a different name for the place: America. In ancient times your people crossed the sea to find that place, because nobody had travelled so far before. And then they left that place, because they had an opportunity to travel much, much farther."
"That's right," said Gunnar. "The Starwhales came. They spoke to Old Klimmet in his mind and spoke to him about travel through the stars. How could he refuse? Travelling through space to colonize new worlds – that would be the stuff of legends. And it was!"
"So they took you to your world," Zhizhi said. "What do you call it?"
"Ilsse," said Gunnar. "The White Lady."
"And you made a colony there," continued Zhizhi. "You lived much as you always had, back in the other place. But then you discovered you were not alone."
"The men of Ugghu, the Black Hen," spat Gunnar. "They came in their spacecraft. They were as weak as you. We killed them."
"Why?" pressed Zhizhi. "Why did you kill them?"
"Why not?" Gunnar shrugged as best he could in his constrained condition. "Because they wanted our land and women? Because we wanted their ships? Because they were different."
"So Ilsse warred upon Ugghu, and vice versa," said Zhizhi.
"That's so," said Gunnar. "They had magic like you. We captured them anyway, and made them show us how to make ships like theirs. Most of their magic was not worth studying, but the people of Ilsse are wanderers. We took to space flight like ducks to water. From time to time we bring the war to Ugghu, just to show them they're weak. They fight like cowards and we die like heroes. Ugghu has not invaded Ilsse for a long, long time."
"But you have no radios," said Zhizhi. "How did you know when we arrived in this star system?"
"We're not idiots," said Gunnar. "We watch the skies with telescopes, mainly to watch for Ugghu invasions, but also to study the other planets. You never know when the Starwhales will return to take us back to Vinland so we can boast of our accomplishments there. Or, sometimes other threats come. So, when we saw the burn of your engine, we knew something new had come. Fifteen warbands formed to confront this new threat. Two went to attack Ugghu, to show them we are still stronger than they are, and remind them of the consequences of trying any funny stuff. The remaining bands came here, to confront you."
"Why fight?" cut in Zenia. "Why not talk peacefully?"
"See, that's exactly what weak people say," said Gunnar, amused. "Strong people always fight first. It sends an important message: we're ready to fight and die. Then, if it seems appropriate, one may choose to parlay instead of fighting further. That initial sacrifice repays itself many times over; an enemy will be afraid of you, and others will be glad to call you friend."
"Sounds like good advice," said Korda.
"You mentioned that sometimes other threats come," said Zhizhi. "What other threats?"
"Well," said Gunnar, "A long time ago there were the Green Heads."
**
_Sagan_ burned again, looping around the outside of the system in a broad ellipse before falling inward again on the far side. Gliese 581d was there, a lovely pale green bauble with whitish sworls.
"It looks like a gas giant," said Zenia, watching the disc grow in the observation lounge.
"It's definitely not one," replied Liang. "The density is far too high. It has a thick atmosphere, true, but there's a rocky planet down below it. The total mass of 581d is about ten Earth masses."
As _Sagan_ approached the planet, and Korda calculated the appropriate angle of attack to enter the atmosphere without bouncing off of it, Matsen squinted at the primary star. Even though the orbital radius of 581d was only half that of Earth's, the red ball of Gliese 581 was still a small, pathetic sight. The star could be looked at with the naked eye, and it shed much less light than the Sun. The red illumination turned the green sunward surface of the atmosphere a sickly grey.
"How can such a small sun possibly give off enough radiation to make this planet habitable?" Matsen wondered.
"The greenhouse effect works in our favor here," replied Matsen. "With a thick enough atmosphere, CO2 levels can rise and heat can be trapped. This allows the Goldilocks zone to expand beyond the distances that we would ordinarily use if there were a simple blackbody problem."
_Sagan_ punched through the clouds. The white sworls turned out to be water vapor; the green was something else and had a delicate crystalline structure that shattered as the ship dove through it. The dense cloud layer was several kilometers thick, but then a region of clear air existed all the way down to the planet's surface. The entire crew gasped.
A broad green sea covered virtually the entire surface of the world. Only a few islands dotted here and there stippled the ocean, which was wrinkled with an elaborate pattern of white-capped waves.
"Gunnar says we're looking for a long chain of islands," reported Zhizhi from the cargo bay. After his initial disdain for women, Gunnar had proved remarkably eager to talk with her.
"How did you come to fight with these Green Heads?" asked Korda over the comm.
"Oh, well, a fight was inevitable," replied Gunnar. "The Green Heads were strong, not weak like the Ugghas. When they came to Ilsse, we fought. When we came here, we fought. We fought for a long time, because they were very strong and could keep fighting for a long time. They fought so long and so well that we killed all of them."
"There it is," said Korda. The archipelago was shaped like a question mark and showed definite signs of having been reshaped by intelligent hands. _Sagan_ swooped down and landed on a flat patch in the middle of the largest island; vegetation had reclaimed it, and was steadily tugging down the walls and low towers that broke up its otherwise smooth outline.
Korda walked down the ramp with Zenia to look around. They found the first Green Head lying on the sand near an estuary. It was a giant stone statue, its impassive features staring up at the green sky. Korda had seen pictures of the Easter Island statues before. These were very close.
"Somebody is starting a collection of Earth prehistoric cultures," mused Zenia.
"They're doing a lousy job of keeping their collection safe," observed Korda.
"Maybe that's why we're here," said Zenia. "To replace this world that died."
"That better not be it," said Korda. "We're not butterflies. We sting."
