A Drop in the Ocean
© 2006 Level_Head
He moved carefully over the ice, occasionally slipping on the crystals frozen out of the methane rich atmosphere of this world.
Each time he slipped, a hand felt reflexively for the two flat objects in their padded pouch at his side. They were not fragile, in the normal sense, and could withstand a modest amount of impact without damage. But they represented great value - and a large investment of time, even if it wasn’t exactly his time.
The scientist knew he probably didn’t have much time. The theft had been discovered, and he had been followed even to this out-of-the-way place. Lon’s environmental suit was reasonably comfortable for the moment, and the distance to the refueling ship was not far. And that ship might give him just the opening-literally-that he needed. Once he got there … well, his plans weren’t quite developed that far yet.
Lon slipped again, and cursed eloquently the evolutionary heritage that repurposed front “legs” for tool use, leaving him too few to be stable on this treacherous plain. His suit communicator sprang to life, startling him badly; three legs slid out from under him, and he went down on the one remaining knee. “Lon G’ven! You are ordered to remain where you are!”
Lon had instinctively ducked-but made no reply. Maybe they thought he was waiting for them. He’d bolted from his landing craft when he received the first communication demanding his surrender. His suit’s equipment told him direction, oriented to this world’s relatively feeble magnetic field, but he had not thought to bring a direction finder. With any luck, he was more than halfway to the ship.
He forced himself to think about something less fearful than the coming confrontation. The ice commanded much of his attention: Grey-brown, stained from contact with this murky atmosphere that was poisonous to breathe, and even poisonous to the life below the ice. With so much energy from the local star reflected back into space, this ice had probably not changed much in the planet’s nearly four-billion-year history.
Certainly the life below the ice was primitive. Seemingly locked in a stalemate with the environment, it was limited to simple, individual life units - no cooperation, no specialization. Nothing had ever been found on this planet that would qualify as a multi-celled organism.
Lon’s own original research had been on the life of this refueling station. He became, reluctantly, part of the team developing technology based on it, since there was something to learn even from primitive life forms. The local life used a genetic encoding different from anything seen before, but that was fairly easy to manipulate.
Lon, too, was fairly easy to manipulate. Was he duped into stealing two of the research containers, or was he too willing to be paid off to make up for his own efforts being downplayed? He didn’t know, and he’d thought about it since he first left his home world.
Ah, but that payoff didn’t happen, and he’d wound up here, on the world the research was based on, running for his life.
Jarni moved carefully on the slick surface, tracking his prey across this strange world. The Golden Star’s fueler craft rested just ahead, and Lon was going to beat him to it. He could not see Lon, though in clearer air he would have been visible in the distance.
Perhaps a distraction: “Lon, I see you. What do you think you can do at the fueler?”
Jarni watched his instruments carefully - yes, Lon had stopped moving. Good. But there was no answer. Then: “Don’t come any closer.”
Jarni was amused. “Now, why would you say that? You know it’s my job to take you back with me.”
“I tell you again: come no closer.”
Lon sounded pathetic, even to himself. But he took hope from one aspect - his pursuer’s comment made it seem that he was near his destination.
Lon peered into the distance, but the clouds of cold particulates defeated his infrared vision. He used the suit’s eyepieces, which shifted light down from a slightly higher spectrum. There was something! The heat beacon of the fueling craft seemed to give off waste light in a higher range, for he saw a couple of dim points of illumination, shining like stars in the murk.
He lurched back to his feet, and paced toward the light, hand clasped on the pouch just above his front left leg. Walking was tricky enough here, but looking through the eyepieces to do so made the going difficult. He realized that the light was growing rapidly brighter, and now could use his vision. Just moments to go!
And he would think of something.
Jarni, too, was hampered by vision limitations. He followed the rogue scientist’s telltale across the surface, but was having to proceed slowly. Frustrating! This top slush was slippery indeed, though it looked roughened to the naked eye.
He was so intent on his instruments that he was surprised to look up and see the beacon from the fueler ship. Now, though, he could focus on his footing-and maybe gain some time.
The ship materialized from the mist. Lon had never seen a fueling operation, despite how common the practice was on this planet; his research stations were small and self contained. He seemed to be close, but he struggled to adjust for the scale of the thing.
“LON G’VEN! STOP! I SEE YOU NOW.”
Lon, this time, was too focused on his goal. And he found as he approached that the footing was better, apparently the operation of punching through the ice under the ship affected the ice nearby.
He ran.
Jarni could make out, barely, Lon’s form breaking into a run. He automatically did the same, and both front legs went sideways on the first step. Jarni instinctively rolled right to shield his weapon from impact, but this didn’t protect his leg, and he felt the right forward limb give as too much strain was applied.
The communication link was still open, and he managed to do no more than grunt as he held the injured limb to his belly. But training won out and, grunting again, he got on his remaining legs and staggered forward across the ice.
Momentarily, the going got easier, though he still could not put weight on that forelimb.
The bulk of the fueler, essentially a giant water tank with accessories, loomed over Lon. He ran underneath the belly of the beast, and found the main intake pipe. It was several times his own length across. In a happier time, he would have been distracted calculating the rates of flow, and just how long it took to pump enough reaction mass for the mighty vessel in orbit overhead.
For now, he keenly wanted to see how it penetrated the ice. Yes, there was a low area around the pipe’s base, now that he was close enough to see into it. And at the edge of the pipe itself, at the bottom of the surrounding slope, was what he’d hoped for.
“Stop where you are!”
But Lon was ready.
Jarni’s quarry did stop, and reached into a pouch. Jarni half-expected a weapon, through it would have to be small. But no, as Jarni limped closer, he could make out that Lon was holding aloft the stolen goods, the science containers he’d absconded with.
That was a foolish mistake.
“Lon, set it down, and step aside, and lay down with limbs out.”
“You stop. You know what I’ve got.”
“Actually, I don’t, nor do I care. I will bring you back, and your stolen goods too. Your choice now is simply: do you want to be alive for the trip?”
“You don’t know what this is?” Lon held his hand up higher. “This is the fate of a world, and you cannot -“
The shot pierced Lon, cutting off his speech and hurling him backward. Jarni had aimed low, through Lon’s heart chambers and well away from the hand holding the package. An easy shot at this range, and the stopping power of his military-issued projectile weapon made this stop permanent.
Jarni’s job was to recover the stolen goods, intact, and he’d been told that a simple drop to the ground would not harm the container or contents.
But to Jarni’s annoyance, Lon’s body went backward, and apparently into some low depression around the pipe behind him. The dropped package went over with him, slung backward by the impact to its holder.
Blast.
Jarni hobbled forward, stopping at the edge of a shallow, slick crater. He watched, fascinated, as Lon’s body slid down the gentle slope away from him. Yes, there was the package.
And then Jarni looked past the sliding body to the dark area around the pipe. Open water!
He launched over the edge himself-and immediately decided that this wasn’t a good idea. He had no line, nothing to fasten himself to anything, nothing to stop his slide, and he hadn’t seen any of the ship’s crew out. They had more sense than he was exhibiting.
All right, one thing at a time. Grab the goods, and the body if convenient, and … somehow … stop.
The maddening package was too smooth, and kept right behind its erstwhile thief, bumping into the body as it slid over the slightly irregular surface.
Jarni, sprawled but struggling to go faster, caught up to his goal just as it slid over the edge. One hand on the package, one on his victim …
And immediately let go of both when his injured leg hit a protrusion of ice at the edge.
Shooter, target, and the separate package that did not contain the fate of the planet disappeared under the narrow liquid surface around the pipe.
All immediately sank, with Jarni still clutching his leg. Jarni’s next action was to curse himself, and swim awkwardly forward to grab the body in the fading illumination. He thought that the biggest problem was the missing package, now a dark rectangle fading to invisibility in the depths below.
Jarni’s life support system kept him alive for quite some time. He had time to search the body still in his grip, looking for something useful, and only then discover that the second package was still in Lon’s leg pouch.
Pierced by Jarni’s projectile.
* * * * *
The tiny robot - one of trillions once contained in a stasis package - moved carefully across the surface, homing on a particular pore in the membrane of the cell. It had been engineered to modify the basic codes of certain cells, to install a gene-suppression mechanism for the development cycle. To allow cooperation, specialization. And with any luck, to kick start the development of multi-cellular creatures.
* * * * *
The plated, segmented creature moved carefully across the surface, leaving tracks in the soft mud of the sea-bottom. Its body was simple, and it was one of uncountable cousins, most of which did not survive the trial and error of different body plans. For a billion years, bacteria and simple cells had reigned supreme; for tens of millions of years, the new concept, multicellular life, would be merely an upstart competitor.
But by the end of this period, the Cambrian Explosion would have resulted in a few basic, successful plans, and the world would never be the same.