“Here we go,” de Falla breathed. Then he nudged the buggy’s throttle and the cart lurched forward. It bumped over the edge of the hatch and down the ramp that extended to the ground of New Earth.
Into the Forest
“It’s like a park,” Brandon marveled as they drove toward the edge of the glade. “A beautiful, well-tended park.”
Jordan agreed. The glade was wide and level, no large stones or knolls to mar its smoothness. As if it had been prepared to be a landing field.
Meek echoed Jordan’s thoughts. “Well tended by whom?”
Brandon laughed. “Mother Nature.”
Thornberry broke into their conversation. “I’ve laid out the track of the two rovers on your navigation screen, Silvie.”
De Falla glanced at the screen. “I see it.”
Brandon leaned over the side of the buggy. “I can see their tracks on the grass!”
“Good,” said Thornberry. “Follow them right along.”
“Right,” de Falla said.
The trees looked vaguely like pines, Jordan thought. Tall straight trunks with foliage high above. The kind Native Americans used to build their dwellings. What were they called? Then he remembered, lodgepole pines. Good for construction.
De Falla followed the tracks of the robotic rovers as they rolled into the forest. The way was easy, the trees were spaced widely enough to allow ample passage through them. Not much foliage between the trees, just a few clumps of bushes here and there.
“Butterflies!” de Falla called out. Jordan followed his outstretched pointing arm and saw a dozen or so bright yellow creatures flittering around the bushes at the base of a tree.
“We should have brought a net,” Brandon joked.
“A mature forest,” Meek observed primly. “The trees’ canopies shade the ground, which makes it difficult for smaller shrubbery to grow.”
“There was a war here,” said de Falla. Before anyone could react, he went on, “A war of different forms of plant life, all competing for the sunlight they need to live. The trees won, and the other forms died out.”
“Not entirely,” Jordan said, pointing to a clump of bushes off to their right.
De Falla nodded, but replied, “If we’d been here a few thousand years ago, this whole region would be entirely different. Lots of different species, wouldn’t look anything like this.”
“Life evolves,” said Brandon.
“Ecologies evolve,” de Falla amended.
Meek h’mphed. Jordan smiled to himself: Harmon resents having a geologist making comments about biology. Territorial imperative, academia style.
A massive boulder loomed up ahead. Jordan could clearly see the tracks of the rovers swinging off to the right to get around it. Glancing at the navigation screen, he saw the rovers’ tracks marked in bloodred.
De Falla turned in the same direction to skirt the boulder.
“Look!” Meek shouted. “A squirrel!”
Jordan saw a tiny blur of gray scampering up one of the trees. It stopped, chattered angrily at them, then scooted farther up.
“It couldn’t be a squirrel,” Jordan heard himself say.
“It certainly looked like a squirrel,” Brandon said.
“Convergent evolution,” said de Falla, with awe in his voice. “Similar environment evolves similar species.”
“That’s not what we have here,” Meek said.
With a grin, de Falla replied, “Isn’t it? Sure looks like it to me. Grow a forest and you get squirrels.”
“Stick to your geology, man,” Meek asserted, “and leave the biological questions to those who know something about the field.”
De Falla shrugged good-naturedly.
“Haven’t seen any birds,” Brandon pointed out.
“You will,” de Falla assured him. Then he added, “Probably.”
“They won’t be the same as birds on Earth,” said Meek. “I can assure you of that.”
De Falla looked as if he wanted to argue about it, but he kept his mouth shut.
Meek shook his head. “All the life forms we’ve found in the solar system are completely different from anything on Earth.”
“Different environments,” said de Falla. “None of those worlds is anything like Earth.”
“What about those things in Europa’s ocean?” Brandon asked. “Beneath the ice. Aren’t they like terrestrial algae beds and kelp?”
“Outwardly,” Meek said, “but their biochemistries are very different.”
“Do you think there might be predators in these woods?” Brandon wondered. “You know, something like bears or wolves?”
Before Meek could reply, de Falla said, “That’s why we brought the stun guns with the rest of the equipment.”
“Maybe we ought to take them out and have them handy,” Brandon suggested.
Meek said firmly, “Predators will be wary of us, they’ve never seen anything—”
De Falla tromped on the brakes so hard they all jolted forward in their seats.
“The rovers,” Jordan said, pointing.
The two rovers were sitting about a hundred meters ahead of them, parked side by side among the trees, squat oblong shapes on multiple little wheels. They looked unblemished, factory-new, gleaming in the sunlight filtering through the trees’ canopies high overhead.
“Mitch, are you still there?” Jordan called.
“Right here,” Thornberry replied, his face filling the control panel screen.
“We see the rovers.”
“Yes, I’ve got them on camera.”
Brandon started to get up from his seat. “Let’s go see what’s wrong with them.”
Jordan half-turned and gripped his brother’s wrist. “Let’s scout the area a little first.” To de Falla he said, “Silvio, can you get us a little closer?”
De Falla nodded once and nudged the throttle. The buggy edged forward, slowly.
“I don’t see anything,” Brandon said.
“No footprints,” said Meek. “No sign of tracks in the ground. Except the rovers’ own, of course.”
When they got to about twenty meters’ distance, Jordan asked de Falla to stop. He stood up at his seat, gripping the seat back in front of him for balance, and scanned the ground around the rovers. Meek was right, he saw. The grass was undisturbed except for the tracks of the rovers themselves.
They were flat, ungainly vehicles resting on springy wheels designed to traverse over rough territory. Sensor pods and antennas studded their tops. Powered by a self-contained miniature nuclear electric system, they had a design life of six months. But they hadn’t lasted six hours on the surface of New Earth.
Cautiously, the four men got out of the buggy and approached the rovers. Both were silent, unmoving. Jordan laid a hand on the cover of the nearer rover’s miniature nuclear power plant. Cold. That shouldn’t be, he thought. The power plant should be warm, if it’s still functioning.
Jordan realized he couldn’t get to his shirt pocket for his phone with the biosuit covering him. Feeling slightly annoyed, he trotted back to the buggy and slid into his seat.
“Mitch, the rovers are cold, as if their power systems have shut down.”
“I’ll activate the robots,” Thornberry said. “They’ll do a diagnostic.”
The two robots suddenly stirred to life, got up from the rear of the buggy, and rolled across the grassy ground toward the rovers.
“Now we’ll get to the bottom of this,” said Thornberry’s image.
An hour later, as Jordan sat in the buggy, Thornberry’s face looked bitterly unhappy.
“They’re just dead,” he growled. “As if somebody drained the deuterium out of their reactors.”
“How could that be?” Jordan asked.
“How should I know?” Thornberry snapped.
“Should we fly a pair of new fusion reactors in to replace the dead ones?”