Spacer Tales: The Explorer

Spacer Tales

  The Explorer

  S J MacDonald

  Published by S J MacDonald

  Copyright 2011 S J MacDonald

  The Explorer

  Kluskey’s bar was busy with spacers and their kids enjoying a family event. At these times Kluskey’s only served foamy cornbeer and soft drinks, along with protaburgers and Tam Kluskey’s famous ice cream mountain. The dance floor had been set to bounce-grav, with a bunch of kids there shrieking and laughing as the gravity alternately flipped them into the air and bounced them back again. Everyone was having fun, with Tam himself chatting with customers as they got their orders from the automated bar.

  Then the Excorps’ officer strolled in and everyone went nuts. The Exploration Corps were the superstars of the spacer community, as famous as movie or sports stars. They would have recognised this man the moment they saw him even without the blue Excorps’ uniform and the Astrover mission badge on his arm. This was Lt Amil Talen, recently returned from a two year expedition. He had the stocky build, chestnut-brown skin and dark silky hair of a native Neuwaldian, with chocolate-warm eyes and a wide, friendly smile. He had been Wobbly on the Astrover expedition – an Excorps term for an officer going on their first deep space exploration - and was now back on Neuwald for a few months’ leave. The fact that the local media had not get got tired of chasing him for interviews was apparent from the glare of camera lights and howls of frustration as the journalists were prevented from following him into the bar, but Amil was entirely at ease with it and just laughed as the people inside yelled with excitement at his arrival.

  ‘Hey, Tam.’ He acknowledged the cheers of the crowd with a friendly grin, but came straight over to the bar with an outstretched hand, greeting the owner of Neuwald’s most popular spacer hangout.

  ‘Good to see you, Amil.’ Tam grinned back. Tall and shaggy haired, Tam Kluskey seemed to be behind the bar pretty much all of the time, apparently surviving on bar food and catching naps when things were quiet. ‘Cornbeer?’ Tam drew a glass himself, overriding the automatic systems, and laughed again as at least thirty spacers were waving credits at him, trying to pay for Amil’s drink. No member of Excorps would ever have to pay for their own beer in any spacer bar. They could fill swimming pools with the amount that people tried to buy them. ‘On the house!’ Tam told the crowd, and they accepted that, though several of them immediately asked the explorer if he wanted anything to eat.

  ‘No, no thanks.’ Amil gave Tam a nod of thanks as he took the glass of creamy cornbeer and tasted it appreciatively. ‘I’ve got a dinner thing to go to.’ He explained, gesturing at his uniform as the offers to buy him a meal began to escalate. Amil might be home on leave, but it was expected that he would give interviews and attend social events. There were, after all, less than a hundred members of Excorps on active service, most of them by definition far out in uncharted space, so when any of them did return to their homeworlds there would be a lot of dinners held in their honour, invitations to lunch with the System President and so on. ‘Can’t stay long, just called in for a beer and to pick up the goss.’ Said Amil, which made the spacers laugh because right now he and the Astrover expedition were the gossip.

  The Astrover had crossed the Gulf, the enormous gap between spiral arms of the galaxy, and had been exploring uncharted space. They had discovered four new living worlds, with the most advanced life form on any of them a six legged amphibian which hooted and whistled. There was already a clamour from the spacers asking him to tell them about it, with the nearest of them patting the surface of the bar encouragingly.

  Amil hopped up to sit on the bar, laughing again at the roar which went up from the spacers at this indication that he was willing to tell them a story. The crowd was already gathering around, shushing one another. Kids were pushing through to stand at the front, looking up at the explorer with eager, excited faces. Most of these kids were growing up on freighters, spending weeks at a time out in deep space. Some of them had even been born on starships, spacebrats to the bone. Even the youngest kid there, a chubby four year old with ice cream round his mouth, could have named every member of the Astrover expedition and the four living biosphere worlds they had discovered.

  ‘Okay, okay!’ Amil quietened everyone down with a lifted hand, and as an expectant silence fell, went on, ‘I’ll tell you about Camilvald.’ Some of the children cheered but others hushed them quickly, everyone listening with keen interest as the explorer took a sip of his cornbeer and began his story.

  ‘It was the third biosphere we surveyed. The first two were slimeworlds, with nothing of interest.’ The spacers nodded understanding. Most of the worlds which registered as having a living biosphere on long-range scanning turned out on closer inspection to be covered in various kinds of algae. Spacers called them slimeworlds, only visiting them if they were desperate for some time off the ship. A few hours of shoreleave on a cold, stinking, slime-encrusted planet could really make you appreciate the comforts aboard ship.

  ‘As we came up to XJ-379 we could see it had a much richer biosphere.’ Amil said. ‘Though no indications of any kind of technology or civilisation. So we put probes into orbit and after four days of scanning found nothing but primitive fauna, the go was given for atmospheric and ground sampling. We spent eleven days doing that using ROPs.’

  The Remote Operated Probes that Excorps used were entirely sterile, designed to protect both the environments of the worlds they were surveying and the crew of the ship as they brought samples back for analysis. Nobody knew, after all, what kind of deadly pathogens might be found on unknown worlds.

  ‘Finally, it was decided that it was safe for us to go groundside.’ Amil’s face showed the excitement he’d felt when that decision was made. Strictly speaking it wasn’t necessary for explorers to set foot on the worlds they were surveying, since ROPs could collect all the data and samples needed, but no world was really considered properly ‘discovered’ till humans had actually set foot on it. In a tradition as old as space travel itself, the first explorers setting foot on a newly discovered world were allowed to name it.

  ‘So, we went down.’ Amil told them. ‘Five of us – Chucky Elvorth in command, Dal T as pilot and environmental officer, Cinthy Jahala as medic and safety officer, Pullo Giscard as biologist, and me. Me being Wobbly, of course, I came along at the back with the trolley, bringing all the gear.’

  He paused, remembering, a look of wonder on his face.

  ‘I’d been dreaming of that moment all my life.’ He said. ‘I was ten years old when I decided I wanted to be an explorer.’ He looked at the kids, seeing that several of them were nodding or saying, ‘Yes, me too!’ Many kids, even groundhogs who’d never been further into space than a bus ride within their own star system, went through a phase of wanting to become explorers one day.

  ‘It takes a lot of work.’ Amil warned. ‘Doing the right courses in high school and college and jumping through all the hoops you need to in order to join the Fleet, graduating as an officer and getting all the shipboard experience and other qualifications that Excorps want before they’ll even consider you. I was with the Fleet for six years and had to get qualifications in physics, exo-environmental studies and archaeology before I even applied to Excorps. Then I spent two more years training with them and another year working at a base before I was selected for the Astrover expedition.

  ‘It was an incredible experience. We were eight months out, by then, well past Beyond and deep in Forever.’

  The kids beamed at that, recognising the reference to a very famous book, ‘Past Beyond to Forever’, written by explorer for kids about what it was like to go beyond
the limits of human explored space into infinity. ‘I’d stood on eleven new worlds, nine of them lifeless and two slimeworlds.’ Amil smiled again at the memory. ‘Even slimeworlds and dead rocks are amazing when you know you’re the first people ever to stand on them. But for all of us, of course, short of the golden prize of making first contact with intelligent life, what we dream of is walking on alien worlds, seeing strange new life forms no human eyes have ever seen before. And there we were, stepping out onto this weird, beautiful alien world.’

  They had all seen the pictures, naturally, with extensive footage released by Excorps along with a lot of scientific data. Camilvald was a light gravity world with a high proportion of water. Hot, humid and often stormy, it had