America 2040 - Golden World Part 3

Removing the quarters intact from the ship served two purposes: It gave the colonists comfortable shelter until larger and more luxurious homes could be built, and it opened up vast areas aboard theSpirit of America to be filled with cargo for the return trip to Earth.

An automated well driller had tapped into sweet, pure water at reasonable depths, and there was the little stream that came into the bay on the rocky, northern side in a spectacular little waterfall. These waters were also sweet and pure and could be used for drinking until the wells were drilled and plumbing hookups made. Electricity would come from the ship's fusion-generator plant. "Look, sir," Clay said, tapping Rodrick on the shoulder and pointing.

A large, self-propelled drilling rig was pulling away from the landing site and heading toward the rocky highlands inland to the east. "Good," Rodrick said. "They're not wasting any time." The colony needed oil first and foremost, not as fuel but as building blocks for the plastics to be used in permanent construction and the thousand and one other items that would be needed.

It was all going well. From the productivity of the last few hours, Rodrick felt confident that the colony would be settled before the end of the next day, and then they could all get down to business.

A small trail of dust at a distance of about one mile south of the bay caught Rodrick's attention. He focused the scout's long lenses and saw the sun gleaming off the admiral's white uniform. Gliding next to the admiral, on sets of tracks that had been self-mounted, was the six-foot, eight-inch TR5-A robot called Mopro, Grace's Mobile Overt Protection Robotic Operator.

"Rodrick to the admiral," Rodrick said into the communicator.

"Admiral reporting, Captain. Over."

"How does it look?"

The admiral and Mopro, who packed more firepower than a whole company of infantry, had requested permission to make a reconnaissance of the area immediately surrounding the landing site.

"Sir," the admiral said. "You have picked a location ideal for defense."

Rodrick chuckled. Of course he'd picked a location ideal for defense. Rodrick was quite satisfied with his selection of a landing site. So far the only large life indications picked up by the scout's life sensors had been in the subtropical jungles of the twin southern continents of the western hemisphere. Here tall, ice-bound mountains cut off a peninsula from the continental mainland and would be a strong deterrent for anything coming from the east. There was ocean to the south, west, and north, with the great desert beyond the coastal mountains in the northwest.

"All is quiet," the admiral said. "We are just completing our circuit of the landing area."

"What life forms have you seen?" Rodrick asked.

"Aside from those already noted, sir, no animal life," the admiral said. "However, we have observed several species of insects. I think that Dr. Kwait will be pleased. The insects seem to perform the function of pollination, just as bees and b.u.t.terflies do on Earth."

"Keep up the good work, Admiral," Rodrick said. "Rodrick off."

He pushed the scout upward. "Well, Clay, it's time we took a look at our little Eden, isn't it?"

"I'd like that," the boy answered.

The land chosen by Rodrick for the first settlement was an almost square, blunt protrusion from the planet's largest continent. North of the landing site, the north-south coastline faded away slightly toward the east. In the distance was a range of coastal mountains with the distinctive peaks of dormant volcanoes. Past the mountains the coast turned eastward, back toward the bulk of the continent. To thesouth the coastline ventured westward to end in a large, rocky cape at the southwest tip of the peninsula.

The southern coastline of the peninsula was low, with saline marshes extending inland in bays. Two major rivers emptied into the sea through the coastal marshes, one river having its source in a large lake about two hundred miles inland from the west coast on a line to the north of the landing area. The other came from the ma.s.sive inland mountains, which very effectively separated the peninsula from the continent proper, with peaks reaching to a height that made the Himalayas and the Andes lesser mountains.

The river that had its headwaters in the large inland lake meandered to within a few miles of the landing site before curving back to the south. Halfway to the lake, the river was joined by a smaller stream, which had impressed Jack Purdy with its fishing possibilities. It came down from the coastal mountains.

Rodrick piloted theDinahmite to the northeast, following the river to the big lake. A brisk wind was blowing over the lake, and it was large enough to form four-foot waves.

"Quite a body of water," Rodrick commented.

"It's beautiful," Clay said. "I was just thinking, Captain. Remember when Pat and Dinah were in theL'il Darlin , going down to, well, you know, to crash?"

"I remember, son," Rodrick replied. He knew that Clay had been extremely fond of Pat Renfro and Dinah Purdy.

"Remember Pat said we should name a river or something after them?"

"So we will," Rodrick said.

"I think Dinah would like to have that lake named after her," Clay said.

"Well, it has a certain ring. Lake Dinah."

"And maybe Pat would like those mountains named after him."

"Pat's Mountains?" Rodrick asked. "No. Doesn't scan. How about the Renfro Mountains? "

"I like that."

"And let's not forget d.i.c.k Stanton," Rodrick said. "Of course, we can't just go around naming things arbitrarily. We have a committee that will want to have a say in the decisions. But I'll see to it that our friends are remembered. Let's see. We've got a lake for Dinah, mountains for Pat. How about the bay by the landing site? Stanton Bay?"

"I'd vote for that," Clay said.

Rodrick kicked theDinahmite upward and guided her at top speed to the east, then slowed the cruise over the rugged, ice-bound peaks of the tall mountains. To say that they were impressive was a definite understatement. Future generations of mountain climbers would have plenty of challenges.

A low flyover of the coastal marshes to the south spooked thousands of multicolored seabirds into flight.

At times their vivid rainbow colors made a solid palette of beauty below the scout ship. It seemed that nature had squandered all her color on the seabirds; to Rodrick's eye, it seemed that there was a wide range of color even in the same species. The rocky cape at the southwest corner of the square peninsula soared up at least five hundred feet from the sea that surrounded it on three sides, and fell off gently inland to the marshes.

TheDinahmite flew a random course as Rodrick headed her home. He made detours to look at individual land features such as the valley of the large western river, then made a right-angle turn westward over the rocky highlands. Clay was very interested in these highlands because he'd heard Stoner McRae talking about making his first expedition among them. Stoner was in charge of a group that would be responsible for locating deposits of useful minerals and metals for mining, and he was eager to get started. But, like all the other members of the expedition, he first had to get the colony settled off the ship.

It was rough country below. The area was arid-patches of sand studded with spa.r.s.e brownish-green growth alternated with ridges and canyons and b.u.t.tes of gray, sharp-angled rock. Even an all-terrain crawler would have to pick a way through the badlands. Clay was examining the ground closely in the starkly beautiful highlands when he thought he saw something with straight lines and sharp outlines. He caught just a glimpse of it, off to the south, and then the ship was past. He hesitated to speak, but he finally said, "Captain, could you reverse course and take us just about two miles?"

"See something?"

"I don't know," Clay said uncertainly.Dinahmite turned and went back at a slower speed. Clay saw only the jumble of rough, rocky country, a few stunted trees in dry washes. Rodrick made a couple more sweeps, but he wasn't flying a careful search grid using the ship's instruments.

"I guess it was nothing," Clay said, but it nagged at him, that glimpse of sharp right angles and lines.

There are few straight lines in nature. He knew enough about navigation and the instruments aboard a scout to make a mental note of the approximate site of the area where he'd seensomething .

The temporary town was being a.s.sembled at the head of Stanton Bay. Rodrick was already thinking of the bay by that name. A grove of wide-spreading trees had been incorporated in the somewhat flexible town plan, and the gleaming, metallic housing modules from theSpirit of America were being placed among them even as the earth-movers cut streets and cleared undergrowth. A few of the quarters climbed the slope of the gra.s.sy knoll from which Clay had watched theSpirit land.

The view from the town site was magnificent. The land sloped gradually down to the sandy beaches of the bay, and rose to the north into the knoll. One could just see, in the far, far distance, the blue haze that was the huge line of inland mountains, the blue topped by a crown of the white snows. The heavily wooded coastal mountains to the north were much nearer, and to the south the land undulated toward the open plains.

The weather was perfect. Anyone who didn't have a definitely a.s.signed duty post aboard the ship was outside, working to position as many temporary dwellings as possible before nightfall. The training back on Earth at Desert Haven was paying off.

Communications Officer Jacqueline Garvey was in charge of laying temporary power lines so those colonists who would spend the night in their new quarters would have ligfcts. Paul Warden was helping to offload one of the huge building machines that would, once petroleum was available, begin to formulate and mold pre-formed plastic walls for building. The plastic would be made by a new process, developed on Earth within the five years prior to their departure. It was a "smart" plastic, with the property of absorbing heat from cold air and radiating it uniformly to the inside of a building, or reflecting heat when the outside air was warm. Tiny power cables built into the plastic walls would allow residents to light theirhomes with glowing, color-adjustable, soft light.

Mandy Miller's Life Sciences section was the largest single group aboard ship. None of Mandy's staff had drawn work a.s.signments, but they were as busy as anyone, their work aimed at prevention of unpleasant surprises from this alien environment. Within hours after the landing, sample specimens were pouring into theSpirit 's labs. Marine biologists had found life forms in the sands of the beaches and in the surf and were engaged in netting operations from inflatable boats to sample the free-swimming marine life.

Entomologists were roaming the woodlands and gra.s.sy areas near the landing site, armed with nets and capture boxes. Twelve different varieties of soft-winged insects of vivid color had already been identified, and two species of pollinating insects much like bees were being dissected in the labs. The beelike insects had no stingers.

The arrival of a team of scientists hauling a cage on a crawler drew a crowd of curious people who were getting their first look at one of the carnivores that preyed on the silver-horned antelope. The cat-it could not be called anything else-was young, big footed, and wide eyed. It had the long, sharp teeth of the carnivore, but looked like a cross between a kitten and a teddy bear, and the women wanted to cuddle it, until it lifted its lips, gave a very businesslike growl, and shot a paw out to rake long claws against the wire of the cage.

Another team had taken one of the scavenger birds with a stun ray, and the bird, revived in a lab, perched itself unconcernedly in its cage and watched all movement with cold, reptilian eyes. Zoologists quickly but tentatively placed the scavenger bird low on the scale of evolution and compared it to the first flying reptiles on Earth. The reptilian characteristics of the scavenger sent teams in search of other reptiles, and before the day ended three very ugly and quite primitive lizards were aboard ship for examination. One lab was a squawking, fluttering area of noise as a dozen different seabirds in their vivid colors protested their captivity in a cage.

Mandy Miller was in the lab running tests on the blood of the carnivore kitten when her husband stormed in, his uniform streaked with perspiration, his face glowering.

"Did you see where they put our quarters?" he demanded.

"No, I haven't been off ship," Mandy said calmly, "except just to sniff the air and take a look this morning."

Rocky whipped out a plan of the town, spread it on a worktable, and stabbed a finger at a spot. "Right here," he said. "The people on either side of us have a view of the bay. We're directly behind this line of trees, and because of the lay of the trees, the quarters to our left are ten feet closer than they're supposed to be."

Mandy was conducting an important blood-count test. She sighed. "Is it all that bad?" she asked. "I mean, after all, when we build permanently-"

"Yes, d.a.m.n it, it's that bad!" Rocky yelled. "I think Duncan Rodrick deliberately ordered them to put us where we couldn't have a view."

"Oh, Rocky-"

"Don't 'oh, Rocky' me," he snorted. "I'm going to see the captain."

She watched him leave the lab, her face set in grim lines. It was getting worse. Mandy sighed. Rocky had never been able to get along with his commanding officers, and the only reason he had been given the post of first officer was because the government had wanted her so badly to head Life Sciences. They were a package deal, she had told the recruiters; if you want me, you have to take my husband.

Sometimes she wondered if her own relationship with Duncan Rodrick had made things worse between the captain and Rocky. Not that she and Dunc had done anything dishonorable-unless a fond friendship with strong s.e.xual undercurrents between a married woman and a single man was dishonorable...

She also wondered whether her marriage had suffered because she admired Dunc so much. No, she decided, her relationship with Rocky had always been difficult, a parent-child one, really. And Rocky's secretly h.o.a.rding uncontaminated water for himself when the ships supply had been poisoned- Well, that had done irreparable damage to the way she felt about him.

The first officer caught Duncan Rodrick as he and Clay were dismounting from theDinahmite after their sightseeing flight. "I'd like a word with you, Captain," Rocky said curtly.

"Thanks for the ride, sir," Clay said, snapping his fingers to Jumper and making himself scarce. He found Cindy watching the electrical crew hook power into the McRae quarters, with his own little room attached, and they sneaked away to explore the clear creek just a hundred yards from the quarters. The creek ran over beds of polished rock, clear and sparkling. Jumper eased the tension of a long flight in the scout and the heat of the day by dashing ahead to fling himself into the water. He ran up and down on the slick rocks in the shallow water, splashing and yapping in invitation for Clay and Cindy to join him. It took them only a few seconds to take off their shoes, roll up their pant legs, and do just that. The creek was to become their, and Jumper's, favorite place. By default, the creek was to be named Jumper's Run.

"What's on your mind, Commander?" Duncan Rodrick asked Miller when Clay was out of hearing.

"I want to lodge an official protest concerning the location of my quarters," Rocky said, standing at attention.

"Protest noted," Rodrick said. "Now, if you'll explain why?"

"You'll see better what I mean if you'll take a look," Rocky said.

The first-officer's quarters, larger than most, nestled among a group of trees. The spreading limbs shaded most of it from the sun. Rodrick thought it was a very pleasant setting. He looked at his first officer and waited.

"By moving it twenty feet to the south," Rocky said, "we would not be deprived of the view of the bay."

Since there were no windows as yet in the metal rectangle, Rodrick didn't see the point in Miller's objection.

"And I want you to note, Captain, that the house on the left is ten feet closer than the prescribed two hundred feet." The layout of the town allowed for plenty of growth. Each quarters was a.s.signed one acre of land. Slightly exasperated, Rodrick asked, "How can you tell?"

"I measured it," Miller said indignantly.

"Mr. Miller," Rodrick said, "it would seem to me that you'd have better things to do than waste your time worrying about a house being ten feet too close to you. Now if you want to see the bay, I'd suggest that you use a mover to shift your quarters twenty feet to the right. But not until the rest of the quarters are situated."

Rodrick turned and walked away. Rocky glared after him, eyes squinted. The captain's anger told him that he'd been right in thinking that Rodrick had ordered his quarters to be located behind a tree. He didn't understand what he'd done to make the captain dislike him, but if that's the way it was going to be, so be it. This was a new world, and on a new world things could change.

Amando Kwait, the African agricultural expert, had joined a zoological team in order to have a firsthand look at the country. He was a man with a feel for the soil. The semiarid areas near the landing site pleased him. The dry, virgin soil supported several varieties of plant life, including a gra.s.s that seemed to prefer higher areas, such as the rise to the north of the town. In areas where the gra.s.s was exposed to full sun, it grew lushly, and tightly, and so close to the ground that it would, with a minimum of care, make a perfect lawn.

Amando had, in his storage banks, seeds for every useful plant on Earth, and many for which no uses had yet been discovered. In practice, he would go very slowly in trying to adapt Earth vegetation to the new planet, for he remembered the ecological disasters of Earth, such as the innocent importation into Florida and Louisiana of the Far Eastern water hyacinth, which soon clogged the waterways of those states, and the kudzu vine, which became the plant that ate the South, spreading with incredible speed from the highway embankments where it had been thought to be ideal for holding the soil of steep cuts and embankments in place.

If at all possible, Amando would try to develop, alter, or perhaps crossbreed local vegetation to adapt it to other uses. Earth crops would be test grown in certain confined areas at first.

If he had been pleased with the semi-arid uplands, he was ecstatic about the river valleys. The soil there was so rich, so loamed by the endless centuries of growth and decay, that seeds, he knew, would sprout almost overnight and eat the nutrients of the virgin earth to grow to record yields.

Amando filled many specimen bags. In a pack attached to his back he carried a miniature sun-powered a.n.a.lyzer. Before he touched any new species of plant with his bare hands he ran tests, and after checking at least a hundred different varieties for toxicity or irritants, he began to think that something was out of whack on this big, new world, for of the hundred varieties of plant life, not one had so much as a bad smell. He had not even found a plant with protective spikes. Roots and tubers from the low, marshy areas along the river gave off pleasant aromas when dug and sliced, and his preliminary a.n.a.lysis indicated that a few of them might just be edible.

On relatively even ground the small, two-pa.s.senger crawler that Amando had drawn from the equipment park purred along, its hydrogen-burning engine making a muted mutter on front-wheel drive alone. The Hughes crawler had been the standard vehicle for military use and industrial exploration for two decades, and although there were constant minor improvements, the basic design had not been changed since a stripped-down scout model had been used by the first Mars expedition to traverse the burning,boulder-strewn sands of the red planet.

The scout model was the smallest of the three standard models, had the same power plant as the four- and six-pa.s.senger models, and, like the larger models, had the horses to become a cargo carrier with the addition of articulated, nonsteerable trailer units. A complicated control panel allowed the operator to add power to the rear tracks and, when utilizing a cargo train, call on the additional power units in the trailers.

Amando pushed a b.u.t.ton, which lowered the windows and retracted the fleximetal top, so he could bask in the new planet's sun and enjoy the cooling breeze created by the vehicle's considerable speed.

The crawler sped along smoothly. On uneven terrain, Amando could activate automatic levelers, which, with hydraulic hisses, would elevate the individual tracked units on the downhill side to level the vehicle.

There were also laser spikes in the rear track, which could burn holes in solid stone to allow the insertion of sharp spikes to pull the vehicle up grades to forty-five degrees. If Amando were to encounter soft sand, he could activate paddles that allowed the crawler to "swim" through soft sand, deep mire, or open water.

On a short tour near the home base, Amando had no reason to activate the vehicle's computerized navigation system, or the weapons system, which consisted of twin-laser cannon and a wicked, automatic projectile gun system that could spray hundreds of shots per second in any direction.

The crawler came up out of the lush, rich river bottomlands to the semiarid flats, which stretched back toward the landing site. The sun was low to the west, and the orange quality of its light made for a spectacular sunset over the ocean, with long streamers of blood-red stabbing upward. Never had he seen such vivid colors, never more beauty, and just as the sun's disc disappeared into the watery horizon, a glow of deep emerald green flushed the entire western sky. The glory of it filled Amando's eyes with tears of appreciation.

For a long time Amando had questioned his decision to become a member of theSpirit of America expedition, feeling that his place was on Earth, working to ease the terrible famines that ravaged his native continent. Now that he had seen the beauty of this world, he knew that he'd made the right decision.

Many of the native tubers, gra.s.ses, and fruits offered him hope. The lawnlike, deep-green gra.s.s might be the answer to the grazed-out gra.s.slands of Africa. And the soil was so fertile that, given one growing season, he could fill the considerable storage areas opened up on the ship with foodstuffs for the Earth.

The crawler arrived in the town just as darkness came suddenly, leaving the sky overhead studded with billions of unrecognizable stars. A notice was being broadcast that all hands were to board the ship and find seats in the various lounge and a.s.sembly areas. Amando's quarters had not yet been removed from the ship, being far down inside near his gardens, which would not be removed until he had finished his testing and had begun to transplant desirable Earth varieties into the fertile soil.

When the entire colony was gathered before view-screens, Duncan Rodrick reported on their first day in their new town, their new country, their new world. He congratulated them on work well done. Then team leaders reported the findings of the various scientific disciplines. All reports were very positive. The next day's a.s.signments were reviewed and altered as conditions warranted, and those whose quarters were already in place and supplied with power left the ship to spend their first night on the new planet.

Duncan Rodrick had dinner alone and then joined a medium-sized group in a meeting room. The committee was made up of geographers, geologists, and cartographers, with representatives from other -ologies and disciplines. Evangeline Burr, the ship's librarian and historian, was chairwoman. Shefollowed strict procedure in getting the meeting started. A reading of the last meeting's minutes took five minutes.

"At the close of our last meeting," Evangeline said, "we were, once again, discussing possible names for our new planet. Before we return to that subject, let me say that we're honored to have Captain Rodrick with us this evening. Do you have anything that you'd like to say to the committee, Captain?"

"Nothing official," Rodrick said. "I'm just an interested observer. I think the committee is doing a fine job. I've looked over the list of possible names for the planet, and there are several worthy suggestions on the list. I might suggest that you, as a committee, set yourself a goal to come out of tonight's meeting with at least three names: for the planet, the peninsula-which we are beginning to consider 'our country'-and for the town. If we don't come up with something soon, we're all going to fall into habits of calling things by some nickname. I find myself thinking of this planet, for example, as Big Boy, and that's not a very dignified name."

There was a general chuckle. Clive Baxter said, "I know exactly what you mean, Captain. I ran into Clay Girard and Cindy MeRae today, wet to the waist. Clay said they d been chasing crayfishlike things over in Jumper's Run. They'd given that name to the little creek."

"That's exactly how many places got their names in colonial America," Evangeline said. "I think Jumper's Run is a lovely name for our creek."

There were a few murmurs of protest.

Clive Baxter laughed. "Just to prove to ourselves that we can make a decision, I move that we make the official name of the clear, rocky creek near the town Jumper's Run."

"Do I hear a second?" Evangeline asked. The motion was seconded and quickly pa.s.sed, over two brief objections.