“Do we have any physical evidence of who did this?” Penny asked.
“That’s been my job,” Abby said. “We’ve identified several sites that do not match the local construction. Wrong design. Wrong materials. Most of them are close to sites of major resource extractions. Say where several mountains were flattened or huge expanses of trees removed.”
A series of pictures flashed on the wall. They showed several villages. The alien construction used local material like mud bricks or wooden poles to make squat, one-story buildings that sprawled with little or no apparent planning close to the extraction sites.
“Are there any bodies other than the local insects left here?” Kris asked.
Both Abby and the colonel shook their heads. Abby went on. “We haven’t identified anything but the carapaces strewn about. There don’t appear to be any graves left around the aliens’ campsites.”
“They’re taking everything this planet has,” Kris said. “I guess that means they’re also taking back their own dead.”
“That may not be totally true,” Chief Beni said, interrupting.
“I had Da Vinci running a pattern recognition on all the killing fields. He spotted a skeleton among all those carapaces. One endoskeleton among all those exoskeletons. A vertebrate from the looks of it.”
“Please put that on-screen,” Kris said.
The wall opposite the one Abby was using came to life. Its picture was of death. A ridge was covered with the dried carapaces of thousands upon thousands. They were tossed and tumbled together. How much of that was postdeath and how much had happened as they died, only a weeping God could tell.
The picture zoomed in, fleeing from the full scope of the slaughter to concentrate on a smaller tragedy. Two or three carapaces had become disassociated in death. Barely visible under them was a skull.
Two empty eyes and a nose hole stared at Kris. The jaws had fallen open in a silent scream. There were long bones for arms and legs, and a collection of vertebrae where a backbone should be.
“It almost looks human,” Kris said in a whisper.
“It looks like the bastards who tried to kill us,” the colonel said.
“I’m going down there. I need to see this place up close and personal,” Kris said.
“Kris,” Jack said.
“Jack, I don’t want to read a report. I want to be there. See this the way it is. I’ve got a report to make to my great-grandfather and, I suspect, all of human space. Of this, I must bear witness,” she said, jerking a thumb at the view.
Jack gnawed his lower lip but said no more.
“Colonel, you want to come?”
“Definitely. Captain,” he said to Jack, “I hope you will provide us the assistance of your full forensic team. “
“I suspect we’ll land all four longboats, what with the Marines and the boffins.”
“Can I come, too?” came in a small voice from where the door to the Tac Center had edged open a crack.
“Cara, what are you doing here?” Kris asked.
“Dada told me that you were going dirtside, and I ran down here to ask if I could go, too.”
“Dada?” Kris echoed the name of Cara’s computer, one of Nelly’s kids.
“I knew we’d made orbit around an interesting planet, from what the boffins were saying, so I asked Dada to listen in on her mom’s net for anything that looked like fun.”
“Nelly?” Kris now said. “Do we have a security breach?”
“Ah, yes, Kris, it does appear so.” It was funny to hear a computer so embarrassed and searching for words. “I have all my other children on a shared net. I, ah, didn’t notice that Dada had been lurking there, too.”
“It seemed like a good idea,” came in a different voice from Cara’s. “You grown-ups are always ignoring us kids and never tell us anything.”
“Little pitchers have big ears,” Penny said, not making much of an effort to suppress a smile.
“Can I go? Please,” the thirteen-year-old pleaded.
“We could really use a field trip,” Dada added. “Professor Lynch is teaching us science, and he says videos can’t capture the real feel of nature.”
Kris noticed that all the so-called grown-ups in the room were looking around at each other, none willing to make the call. She considered the subject of this landing, fields of dead bodies, and wondered if a kid belonged there.
Kris dodged that and tried another thought. “This field trip will be in space suits,” Kris said. “Do you have a suit?”
“Of course I do,” Cara said. “It was a little snug the last emergency drill, but it still fits. It should.”
Like most kids, Cara needed new everything at alarming frequencies. But the comment also reminded Kris that the kid was growing up. If memory served, Kris hadn’t much liked it when adults remembered her smaller and didn’t notice as she got bigger.
“Well,” Kris said, taking the bull, if not by the horns, then at least by something. “You’ll have to ask your aunt.”
“Oh, you’re tossing this my way?” Kris’s maid snapped.
“Seems like a good idea,” Kris said. “She is asking for permission to leave the ship this time. I’d call that an improvement.”
The young subject of their consideration turned pink at the reference to her previous antic . . . and disaster. “I am asking this time. Please, can I go with you?”
Abby looked clearly torn. The kid was safe on the ship. As safe as any of them were. On the surface of a murdered planet . . . ?
“Is this Professor Lynch going down with the boffins?”
“He has asked to be included,” Professor mFumbo said.
“Do you have space for him?” Jack asked.
“That depends,” the professor said. “At present, I’ve got enough scientists to fill two launches. How many Marines are you taking down?”
Jack ran a worried hand through his hair. “I guess I’m taking two launches full of Marines, less the space taken up by these rubberneckers.”
Kris did a quick survey of the room. Penny raised her hand. So did the colonel and Abby. “Chief, you want to be included in this jaunt dirtside?”
“No way. That place looks cold and miserable, and I don’t see anything down there that you can’t bring up here for me to examine in the comfort of my own shop.”
Kris was none too sure of that, but for now, she’d let the devout coward worship at his personal altar.
“With Cara and Jack, you’ll have five rubberneckers.”
“Hurray!” Cara shouted and headed off to get ready. She failed to close the door, so Kris could hear her skipping down the passageway, the very image of innocent joy.
Kris shook her head. “If we could bottle that, I’d buy a case.”
“It’s our own damn fault that we lose it when we get old and grumpy,” Abby said, the picture of a grump herself.
“Okay, folks,” Kris said, standing up. “There’s a planet down there. What happened to it is a crime screaming for whatever justice this universe can give. Let’s go investigate the crime scene.”
23
The loaded launch flew across what had once been a sea. That fact was emphasized when Kris spotted something and got permission from the boson flying to use the third backup camera.
Nelly pointed it back to what had caught Kris’s eye. There, in the middle of what was now a desert, were over a hundred calcified exoskeletons.
“Any guess what those are?” Kris asked.
“They look huge,” Jack said. “If this was ocean, then they must have filled the econiche held by the whale on old Earth.”
“That lobster would take quite a bit of melted butter,” the colonel said, smacking his lips.
“They look like a pod of beached whales,” Penny said, thoughtfully. “The receding water must have caught them there and left them high and dry.”