Expendable - James Alan Gardner [32]
“This an example of what we were talking about,” I said, pointing at the screen. “If you have trees growing in the ravine, you should have trees growing in the field—it has to be easier for them to root on level ground than on a slope. But it looks like the flat has been cleared.”
“Is that enough to scare you off again?” Prope asked.
“Not in the least,” I answered, working to keep my temper. “Cleared terrain is good for a Landing. You’re less likely to hit something on the Drop, and you have an unobstructed view of things coming to eat you.” I turned to Yarrun. “What about it?”
Instead of answering, he fiddled with dials, rotating the screen’s view through a slow 360 degrees. The meadow seemed very peaceful…no motion but the gentle waving of grass in the wind. “The motion sensors are picking up a lot of animal life,” he reported, “but nothing big. Mostly on the order of insects, with the occasional field mouse. Which is to say, something warm-blooded the size of a field mouse.”
It was easy to forget this wasn’t some tame terraformed world, stocked with all the species we knew, and loved, and could kill if necessary.
“Any thoughts?” I asked the room at large. Prope looked as if she wanted to say something scathing, but knew it would only delay things. “Okay,” I told Yarrun.
“Have the probe drop a Sperm anchor. Immortality awaits.”
Part V
LANDING
Our Robing Chambers
The Jacaranda had four robing chambers for Explorers. This was a matter of prestige. A frigate was equipped with only two robing chambers; a light cruiser had to surpass a frigate in all possible ways, so it had three chambers; and a heavy cruiser like the Jacaranda was obliged to be better still, so it had four.
All three types of ship carried only two Explorers. There was no prestige in having extra Explorers.
Suiting Up
Each of us suited up alone—Yarrun and I in our usual places, Chee in one of the dusty surplus chambers.
Suiting up was a simple procedure: I stood passively, wearing nothing but a light chemise, while robot arms did all the work. Tightsuit fabric was extremely stiff and difficult to handle. Every six months, I had to go through an emergency drill where I wrestled in and out of a suit without robot help, and it always left my hands aching with exertion.
As the suit was being sealed around me, Chee shouted through the wall, “‘And from the tents, the armorers, accomplishing the knights, with busy hammers closing rivets up, give dreadful note of preparation.’ What’s that from, Ramos?”
“Shakespeare…Henry V,” I replied, glad that I happened to remember; but I hoped Chee wouldn’t quote from Timon of Athens. I had skipped Timon in the Academy Shakespeare course; Jelca had actually said yes to going on a date, and it put me in such a dither, I couldn’t concentrate for three days.
The tightsuit continued to assemble around me. As it came together, robot eyes scanned every joint and seam, checking for flaws. There were eight such eyes, each as wide as my thumb, each on the end of a metal tentacle that curled through the air with the nonchalance of a cat’s tail. Yarrun had given each eye a name: Gretchen, Robster, Clinky, Fang…I forget the rest. He swore they had different personalities, but I think he was putting me on.
The eyes swirled about on one last inspection—peering into my suit’s crotch, armpits, the ring around my neck that my mother always claimed was dirty—then the tentacles retracted into the walls and the sterilization process began. I saw none of it; the visor in my helmet opaqued in response to the opening salvo of microwaves. However, I knew I was being bombarded by heat, UV, hard gamma, and several more exotic forms of energy the League of Peoples contended were necessary to cleanse all possible contaminants from the skin of my suit.
We followed this procedure meticulously whenever landing on unexplored planets—especially ones where